Knitting

Free Patterns, Tutorials and Project Ideas

Giveaway: Big Book of Knitted Mittens

by

Big Book of Knitted Mittens review

Sheila is the winner!

It’s almost November, people! That must mean it is high time to get started on knitting all. the. things. for cold weather (if you’re in the top half of the world, anyway). I know my daughter needs new mittens/gloves this year (every year) and I think she wants some new socks, too. I always want to knit a new sweater for her (and at least one for me) even though there are a couple that still fit her from previous years.

If you’re thinking about winter knitting and like to knit colorwork mittens, or want to learn how to knit colorwork mittens, Jorid Linvik’s Big Book of Knitted Mittens is for you. The book includes 45 colorwork patterns, ranging from classic Scandinavian designs to funny animals, guitars and more. (Check out all the patterns on Ravelry.)

Some of the patterns are sized for kids and some for adults, and there’s guidance on how to alter the size by changing your gauge.

If you’d like a chance to win this book, leave a comment on this post before the end of the day Sunday, November 6 and I’ll pick a winner at random. I’d love to know about your experience with stranded colorwork, or knitting mittens, or whatever you want to tell me.

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

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

Save

Comments

  2. Omg, the patterns look wonderful. Too bad the book does not seem available in Canada (on Amazon, at least)

  3. I love knitting mittens. And colorwork mittens are even better. The cat mittens would be perfect for Halloween wearing if it was cold enough here. Now to go find my needles and yarn for a new pair of mittens.

  4. I have knitted a lot of mittens in my day and have done the stranded colors, patterned mittens and adult and kids mittens. This book looks awesome. Thanks for the chance.

  5. Those patterns are absolutely gorgeous. With Winter just around the corner we will all be needing mittens here soon.

  6. A book of dreams! Perhaps I can knit to warm all sorts of hands, as my next endeavor! First scarfs to warm necks, then these for any hands! I’ll borrow and surf for patterns otherwise. Thanks for the opportunity!!

  9. One of the first stranded projects I ever add were beautiful gauntlet style mitten I made for my daughter a few years ago.
    They scared me to death, but I jumped right in and just made them.
    She loved them ,and now I’m hooked.

  10. I made a 2 colour stranded hat for my husband and enjoyed the challenge. It was a fairly simple arrow-like motif. I’v always admired the Scandinavian styled mitts and would love to try knitting some soon.

  11. I love using multiple colors in my work. It always comes out so pretty! Hats are my favorite when using multiple colors!

  12. These mittens are terrific — I have some yarn here just waiting for me to make a pair of these. Love the Rock/Guitar pair.

  13. Not a great knitter myself but my sis-in-law is! Would be a great xmas present to give her!

  14. I’ve done stranded work before, and I’ve done mittens before, but I’ve never combined the two! This looks like a wonderful book and just the inspiration I need. Thanks for the chance to win. 🙂

  15. I’ve always wanted to try colorwork and the designs of these mittens are so beautiful and intricate

  16. How great are those mittens in the picture! I would love to try a few of these patterns out! thank you!

  18. I’ve made colorwork hats and Christmas stockings, but never mittens. I’d like to try the “invisible stranding” techniques that everyone’s talking about these days.

  20. i knit lots of fingerless mittens, but usually in single colours. The patterns in this book look gorgeous!

  22. I’ve always knitted mittens/hats/scarves sets with novelty yarns on two needles. This is much more challenging but I’d like to give it a try because it’s so beautiful.

  23. I’ve done some stranded knitting but I’ve never made mittens so I’m excited to see this book. Thanks for another great giveaway!

  24. I would loooove to have this books. I grew up with threes mittens in Sweden and now I live in Spain and would these patterns would come so much in hand this winter!

  28. These designs are really beautiful. I knit something with stranded color work in a couple of sweaters but I should definitely try again.

  31. My ancestors were from Scandinavia and would love to have patterns based on this heritage! This book looks awesome!

  32. I would love this book! I am a little intimidated about making mittens and this would surely help!

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]