Mittens Mishandled

Christmas is coming! While I don’t feel the need to give everyone on my list a hand knitted item, I do like to give a few. To the deserving, the appreciative and the special.

So, I get this bright (?) idea to try to knit mittens. Even though, JC Briar asked me how often I would need mittens in southern USA, I do have a children and grandchildren who live in the northern parts of the country. So mittens it is!

So I said to myself “After all how hard could it be. I knit socks for goodness sake!”

Well........I found a generic pattern for a mitten. I found a beautiful yarn from Knit Picks called Andean Treasure. I have the right size needles. And away I went.

I pulled out the pattern. Didn’t make a swatch. After all they should fit someone, right?!

I knitted a beautiful 3 inch tall 2 x 2 ribbed cuff. Now I needed to increase for the thumb gusset. Seemed simple enough. I am merrily knitting away until I get to the place where I need to put the gusset on waste yarn. I look at the thumb gusset and think “boy, it looks a little large”. I try on the mitten and yep, it’s big!

Well this is my first try, I forge on ahead. I finish the hand and decrease the top of the mitten like a sock. Wow, is it ever pointy. Kind of like a Norwegian mitten. Hmmmm.

Now I return to the gusset to finish the thumb. It is so large that I figure I have better work some decreases to get it to regular thumb size, because I am a thinking knitter and that should help. Well, I guess I decreased a little too much, because now the thumb looks like a chicken leg!  I try on the glove. The glove is too short for me and the thumb is way too big at the bottom and way to tiny at the tip.  The hand diameter fits well though! So it will probably fit someone.

I make the second mitten the same. Then I take them to my book club. They are very impressed with my knitting since none of them knit and had them try on the mittens. They fit no one! Eeek!

To make a long story a little shorter, I have raveled parts of the mittens and reknitted the top and thumbs on each glove. The length now fits a few people and the thumb is now better. Except for the one where I twisted some of the stitches when I picked them up. They are not a pretty site. Not even mittens a mother would love.

My mom suggested that I just frame them and say to myself. “Good first attempt.”

I have now gotten out my “Handy Book of Patterns” by Ann Budd. I now have a gauge of 6 stitches per inch. I will begin again.....

Until next time . . .