Mittens Inspired by the Emerald Isle

I’m a bit behind on sharing the mittens of the month from Kat at Just Crafty Enough, but this month’s pattern is pretty even if it’s past St. Patrick’s Day.

The Newgrange Mittens were inspired by spirals found on Newgrange at Brú na Bóinne, a monument dating from 3200 BC. But the pretty spirals on the mittens don’t look like they’re for any sort of holiday, so you can wear these mittens any time you like.

They’re worked in two colors using stranded knitting techniques and a chart, so they could be a great skill-building project for someone who hasn’t done color knitting or chart reading before. The bonus is the two layers of yarn that go into the mittens’ construction, making them extra warm.

[Photo via Just Crafty Enough.]

Jorid Linvik’s Big Book of Knitted Mittens: 45 Distinctive Scandinavian Designs is sure to inspire you to want to knit some fun mittens, whether embellished with classic motifs like birds, hearts, moose and classic colorwork designs or those with a more modern feel liks guitars and skulls, a giraffe, penguins or a turquoise lizard.

The book includes a lot of instructions on how to make your mittens come out right, including a discussion of how different gauges can give you different sizes of mittens (and which mittens can be worked to different sizes for kids and adults). The charts are a little different from others you might have seen in that they show how to divide the stitches on the needles and where to place the thumb.

Looking for more knitting patterns for Mittens? Check these out on Etsy.

Next Pattern:

I’m honestly not totally sure what to say about the Sun King shawl pattern from Ursa Major Knits other than isn’t this cool? You should probably make one.

This modular design is worked in two parts, the “waxing” and “waning” sections. Both pieces are asymmetrical and use the same yarns in different ways to mix up the colors and make it even more interesting.

You can choose to use two contrasting solid yarns, a solid and a gradient or two complimentary gradients for your yarns. And you can use any weight of yarn and whatever gauge you like to make shawls of different sizes. There are also a bunch of different size options (seven, in fact) that take the project from a little collar like design to something more like a scarf to a large shawl that wraps around the neck to keep you warm.

The sample projects use fingering/lace weight yarn, but you can use whatever you have on hand to make your own beautiful version of this shawl. Using lace weight, you’ll need twice as much of one color as the other.

There are lots of yarn suggestions on the pattern page on Ravelry, and I love the color choices the designer made so much I’d definitely be tempted to use the same colors they did (there are a couple of different versions on the pattern page if you want to see how it looks in different sizes and different colors).

I love the little diamond shapes a the edges of the pieces, which add a little more drama to the project, as if it needed more.

I’m still not sure this boils down to anything beyond this project looks really cool and you should probably knit it, but that’s pretty much how I pick all the projects I share, so I guess that’s fine. You can check it out for yourself and grab a copy of the pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Ursa Major Knits]

A Shawl to Wear While You’re Reading and Knitting

A Striped Shawl to Celebrate Progress [Knitting]

Next Pattern:

Have you read?