Easy Winter Mittens ala Charlie Brown

September 24, 2013 by Sarah White

Here in Arkansas we’re finally getting cool mornings, though the afternoons are still warming up nicely. Over the weekend my daughter went out to get the newspaper and had to bundle in pants and a fleece jacket, then she didn’t want to take her hands out of her pockets to pick it up!

So I guess it must be time to start thinking about mittens. These Wynter Mitts by Susan Mills for Classic Elite Yarns are bigger than would fit the girl, but they’re adorable, and I just might have to knit some for myself and make a wee version for her. The bold chevron and yellow and black coloring of course bring Charlie Brown to mind, but they’d be bold and beautiful in whatever two colors you choose. You could even use two shades of the same color (the girl would love purple!) or just work them solid for a super fast project that will have your hands warm in no time.

Are you knitting for cold weather already? I’d love to know what’s on the needles.

[Photo via Classic Elite Yarns.]

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.

Comments

Mrs B says
September 24, 2013 at 4:30 pm
Currently I have 3 dead fish hats, a Shark hat and 2 dragon hats then 6 sweaters to knit for my Daughter, Son-in-Law and the 4 kiddies.

Have you read?

Easy Knit Baskets to Use All Your Stash

For the past few years I’ve taken part in a Christmas in July blog hop that encourages people to get a jump on their making for holiday gifts.

I love to use yarn I already have for these projects in the hope that people will consider what they already have that they can use to make projects for themselves or to give as gifts.

This year it was a couple of knit baskets made using partial balls of yarn left in my stash from other projects.

They use the same basic pattern but the first one is made with two colors of bulky yarn, and the second used two strands of worsted weight yarn held together, which made the gauge about the same, but I cast on fewer stitches to make a smaller version.

The bottom of the basket is square, though you can make them rectangular if you’d rather. Then I just knit up the sides in rounds until I was about to run out of yarn. This gave both baskets rather short sides — maybe more like a tray than a basket — but you can keep knitting as long as you like to make the sides of your basket as tall as you want.

They’re worked in seed stitch, which keeps the edges from curling and adds a nice texture to the baskets.

Of course this also allows you to use even more odd balls from your stash. I’d love to make a big one someday combining lots of different yarn. I mean, I’d probably use it to store more yarn, but that’s a fine thing to do.

As it is, these little trays are great for sitting on your desk or bedside table to hold little things that always seem to appear there. I like to use one to hold the supplies for whatever project I’m working on, things like little scissors, my tape measure, a crochet hook, etc.

And they would make good gifts on their own or as a container to hold some other goodies if you like.

You can find the free pattern for these stash busting baskets over at Our Daily Craft.