Convertible Mitten Tutorial

Convertible Mitten Tutorial

Welcome back everyone! Guys we are officially in MARCH, 9 days away from daylight savings time and 19 days until Spring. Unless you ask Google who will tell you Spring is today.  I don't want to hear that.  I know realistically that all of the snow out there is not going to disappear today.  It's way more realistic to hope that it will disappear in 19 days.  (And no I definitely don't want to be reminded that I flew home from India mid April last year in the middle of a snow storm.)

If you guys follow us on Instagram you may know that I finished my Nurtured sweater BUT I'm not sharing that with you this week because I hired my 15 year old cousin to model it for me this weekend.  When I say hired I mean I said, "hey cousin, I need some pictures," and she said, "hell ya!" because she's 15, exceedingly pretty and I think the only thing she loves more than a photoshoot is, maybe, puppies.  Maybe.  I probably shouldn’t out her like that but I love to tease her.  Aaliyah is equal parts my cousin, my baby sister and as close as I’m probably gonna get to motherhood so I make up for it in other ways.

In the meantime I have something else for you all today.  As soon as I finished my Nurtured sweater I immediately grabbed these two balls of yarn that were always meant to be mittens but took a slight detour as the contrasting colours of my Rosarita sweater and I cast on Andrea Mowry’s Tinsel Mittens. Fingerless mittens are my absolute favourite mittens.  The first pair I ever knit were a pair of Hermione's Fingerless Gloves and I have lost count of how many of those I’ve knit in the years since. 

I’ve always wanted to try my hand at convertible mittens but always thought it looked like more work than absolutely necessary.  This time I decided to give it a go and after I successfully navigated the first one I thought you guys might like a short tutorial on just how easy it is to do this to all of your fingerless mittens.

Now I’m not going to give you details about the pattern itself.  I want to be as careful as possible to avoid any copyright issue so I apologize in advance if some of my instructions are a little vague.  If they are, definitely leave me a message and I will try to address it as best as I can.

The first part of the cuff means casting on stitches and picking up stitches along the back of the hand.  The number of stitches that you cast on and pick up should be equivalent to the amount of stitches you were working with on your mitten. I think the easiest way to figure out how many stitches to cast on is to count the stitches that run across the back of your hand.  Subtract that number from the total stiches you need and cast on the difference.

Once you’ve cast on your stitches, you need to know where you’re going to pick up stitches from.  The next time I do this I think that I’d probably knit a couple of extra rounds of ribbing to the glove and then pick up my stitches three or four rounds before the rib just because I would like a little more overlap on the rib of the glove and the rib of the top of the mitten. There is definitely room to play with but anywhere just below the rib of the glove is a good place.

 

With your mitten facing you, pick up your stitches starting on the right side and working your way across the back of your hand.  WORD OF CAUTION: whatever side your thumb is on, make sure you do the opposite for the second mitten so you don’t end up with two of the same side mitten. To pick up stitches insert the tip of your needle into the centre of the first stitch and slip it beneath of the bar of the stitch.

 

Wrap your working yarn around your needle tip and pull it through, creating a new stitch.

Continue in this way until you’ve worked your way across the entire back of your hand.

Divide your stitches evenly between your needles and, being careful not to twist your stitches, join the two ends to knit in the round.  This pattern called for a k1 p1 rib but you will probably elect to use whatever your pattern calls for on the cuff and rib.  Continue in that pattern for an equal amount of rounds to whatever you did on your mitten so that they overlap fully on each other and then switch to a knit stitch (or in pattern, if your mitten has one), leaving just enough room at the top for your decrease rounds.  This pattern had a pretty quick decrease that let me knit pretty close to the top of my fingers but I’ve knit other patterns that were a bit more gradual.  I’ve linked a couple of mitten decrease option below just so that you can decide what works best for you.

1) Kelly's Mitten Class - Hand Decrease

2) Simple Chunky Mittens - Decreasing at the Top of the Hand

3) https://blog.tincanknits.com/2016/12/01/letsknitsimplemittens/

4) http://www.knittingonthenet.com/patterns/mittenformula.htm

I hope this was useful and again if you have any questions please feel free to shoot a message to me and I will answer whatever I can.  That's all for me for this week! Next time you hear from me I'll be armed with some fancy pictures of my recent projects! Until then, PEACE to you and yours and, as always, happy knitting! 

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