I thought that I’d do a series of posts to talk about how I knit a pair of mitts, using the pair I’m currently working on for TheBoy. I don’t tend to use a pattern for mitts, although my mitts are always constructed in the general manner of Marnie’s Hooray for Me Gloves which are linked to the right.

I received the yarn that I ordered for TheBoy’s mitt’s this afternoon. He helped me wind it into a center-pull ball [he makes a great and patient swift!] and then I swatched. I started with a gauge of 9st/in on size 2 needles and it was TheBoy approved as a good fabric for his mitts. I measured his wrist and then I did a little math. He’s got an 8″ wrist so I multiple 8 inches by 9 stitches/inch for a total of 72. I then multiplied this by .90 [90%] and rounded down to the closest even number, for a total of 64 stitches. I used a stretchy cable cast on and joined to knit in the round. I like a good stretchy cuff so I worked the cuff in K2,P2 rib. I ended up knitting 2.25″ because after 2″ of cuff he asked for “just one-quarter inch more please.”

The cuff done, I then determined the length of the gusset. I’ve found that a good rule of thumb [pun not intended] for my gussets is to increase two stitches every third row for the length of my gusset, so I knit halfway around, placed a marker, knit in the front and back of the next two stitches and placed a second marker. Then on every third row I increased by knitting in the front and back of the first stitch after the first marker and then the last stitch before the second stitch marker.

In order to determine how many rows I needed to knit, I took TheBoy’s hand and measured from the bottom of the thumb joint to the lowest knuckle. On his hand, this measurement was 2 inches, so I knit two inches in the gusset pattern established in the previous paragraph.

Once that was done, I knit to the marker and then placed my gusset stitches on a piece of waste yarn. I took it to TheBoy’s hand and he tried it on again to determine how many stitches I needed to pick up in order to make it fit around his hand. You’ll need to pick up at least two, since you’ve got two of your original stitches are now on the thumb gusset waste yarn. In the case of TheBoy, he has big knuckles, so I decided to pick up four. Then, I measured the gap between the top of the mitt and bottom knuckle of his fingers to determine how much I needed to knit before breaking off for the fingers.

Part two will cover adding on the fingers. Feel free to ask questions if anything I’ve said seems unclear!

Cross-posted at the MittenFest Blog