Knitting

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A Chance to Grab this Mitten Knitting Book

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stitch style mittens

uvocca is the winner.

Mittens might not exactly be what you think of knitting this time of year if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, but I would argue they’re as good a choice as socks for summer knitting. They’re small, portable and fun little projects you’ll be glad to have done when the cold weather hits. They might even serve as a reminder that, yes, it will be cold again. Someday. Eventually.

I’ve got a mitten knitting book up for grabs this week.

Stitch Style Mittens has 20 knit and crochet patterns (most of them are on Ravelry) for fingerless gloves, mitts, gauntlets, mittens and warmers of just about any length and style.

There are stripes, cables, colorwork, lace, projects with ribbons and beads and more. It’s a fun collection.

If you’d like a chance to win this book, leave a comment on this post before the end of the day Sunday, June 18. I’d love to know about your experience knitting mittens, mitts and similar warmers. I’m pretty obsessed with fingerless gloves because my hands are cold all. the. time. but I love knitting mittens and gloves, too.

Thanks for visiting, commenting and sharing, and good luck!

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Comments

  2. I knitted some fingerless gloves before. 1 pair with sock wool and cables, using a pattern from drops design. And I also designed a pair myself, blue with a heart in the palm of the hand.
    Both patterns have a seam, and I would like to knit a pair in one piece without a seam one day!

  3. I haven’t tried mittens but they are on my list.
    Would be nice to have a pair of fingerless
    mitts ready for the winter.

  4. Mittens are the accessory of choice in the Northeast. But I confess I’ve never made really nice ones in fine yarn…mostly just hunker down ones in heavyweight wools.

    from sticky VT,
    the Vermonster

  9. Really need some fingerless mittens for winter…easy one’s I’m still beginning ??

  11. I have not made mittens but I have made a pair of fingerless gloves and I love them!

  12. I love knitting fingerless gloves. I have probably knit at least 200 pairs using a cable pattern. I would love to try something different!

  16. Novice knitter here… but just lost my thyroid to cancer so my hands will likely always be cold now, so any and every style of mittens will be welcome!!

  17. I’ve knit a few pairs over the years. The ones I liked the best were knitted then fulled and then a ribbed cuff knit at the end. Really warm and stayed in place. I made myself a pair of bulky flip-tops but I’ll probably not wear them much because my hands always run warm.

  18. Fingerless gloves are the best-selling especially when you live somewhere where it doesn’t get really cold! I’m a big fan of making fingerless gloves.

  21. Yes please I’d love to win this book ,mittens are a greatlittle project to take when I have specialists appointments.

  22. I have made mittens many years ago and would love to try some new interesting patterns!

  23. This would be a great prize. Out knitting guild is making 200 mittens to be displayed on a Christmas tree in our city in December. When the tree comes down, all the mittens will be given to charity. I’m constantly looking for new ways to knit mittens.

  24. I like making matching sets of mitts, hat & cowl, and if I’m really ambitious I’ll add a sweater.

  25. Mittens are my favorite project to knit! Would love to win this book with new pattern and color ideas.

  26. oooooh – what a nice looking book. I made mittens with chunky yarn & they turned out well. Just basic mittens, rib wrist and circular knitting. I’d like to try some with a bit of embellishing!

Have you read?

Knit a Leopard Print Shawl and Learn about Yarn Substitution

When I was looking around for free knitting patterns to share recently, I came across this fun leopard print wrap from Yarnspirations. 

This fun bulky wrap gives you tons of practice with instarsia and makes a bold statement while keeping you warm. It’s rated for intermediate knitters and the design is charted but pretty easy to follow. And it’s only 50 rows and worked in bulky yarn, so it wouldn’t even take that long to knit. (You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations.)

So what’s the problem? The yarn that the pattern calls for has been discontinued, and it’s not a yarn that a substitute for immediately springs to mind. 

The original yarn was Patons Alpaca Blend, a single ply bulky yarn that was a combination of acrylic, superwash wool, nylon and alpaca. 

My first thought was Lion Brand Hue + Me, which is an acrylic and wool blend, with two plies instead of a single. It looks like it has the colors you would need to make this fun shawl. 

But as I was thinking about it, I thought this would be a good opportunity to introduce you to YarnSub if you don’t already know about it. This website is a giant database of yarn that can consider the qualities of the yarn you want to substitute and offer potential substitutions. 

It’s not only thinking about yarn weight, like I was, but also fiber content, number of plies, gauge and even the difference in yardage between one ball and another. It even looks at the price and can be filtered by your price range or preferences about fiber content (if, say, you’re sensitive or allergic to wool, for example, or don’t want to you acrylic). 

When I plugged in Alpaca Blend, it gave me a lot of different options, though many of them were self-striping or multicolored, which wouldn’t work for this project, and I don’t see a way to filter for solid colors only. 

Still, it’s a good tool to give you some ideas you might not know about or might have forgotten about, and it tells you how the new yarn is similar to the old one and how it differs, allowing you to make smarter choices when substituting yarns. 

[Photo: Yarnspirations]