These are directions for the large woman's or medium men's sizes for the mittens in the blog. The heavier pair (gray) is slightly larger so may be worn over the lighter weight red mittens in cold weather.
Finished dimensions:
| fingering | sport/DK | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Using size | 1 | 3 | needles |
| cast on | 60 | 48 | stitches, K2P2 rib for cuff |
| Change to stockinette and size | 2 | 4 | needles for hand |
| Mark thumb gusset | 7 | 6 | stitches |
| and make | 5 | 4 | increase rounds |
| for a total of | 70 | 56 | stitches around |
| transfer | 17 | 14 | stitches onto holder |
| Cast on | 7 | 6 | stitches and knit around plain |
| Decrease 4 stitches per round and kitchener to close hand end. | |||
| Pick up and knit the | 7 | 6 | cast on stitches for thumb |
| Knit stitches from holders and knit around, decrease and kitchener closed | |||
First, make a generous test swatch and use it to determine the gauge, the number of stitches and rows per inch (or centimeters), for the yarn with your needles.
If you have knit sweaters or scarves before, you will probably want to knit at more stitches per inch for mittens and socks. Rather than trying to pull the stitches tighter, switch to smaller size knitting needles.
Wrap a measuring tape around the widest part of the hand, often at the knuckles. Alternately, have the intended recipient of the mittens hold their fingers in a relaxed position and trace the outline of the hand on a sheet of paper. Use a ruler to measure the width of the tracing and multiply it by two. Multiply this hand measurement by your gauge to get the number of stitches around. Be on the generous side with the measurements, especially in children's mittens. Unlike for socks to be worn under boots or shoes, you don't have to worry about a wrinkle causing problems.
Once you make one pair of mittens, adjusting the size for another pair in the same yarn is fairly easy. Just add or subtract a few stitches to the stitches around and apply the same percentage to the thumb. Adjust for length by increasing or decreasing the number of rounds in each section.