Make Your Mittens with Colorwork

Mittens are a utilitarian item if ever there was one. They just need to keep our hands warm reliably. They don’t have to be cute.

But since we’re knitters and we’re going to knit our own mittens anyway, they might as well be cute, too, right?

It doesn’t necessarily take a lot of effort to make a pair of mittens that’s objectively nicer than the options you could buy in a store, but if you want to put in a little more work than that, so you can have a really nice and pretty and warm pair of mittens, I’ve got just the thing for you.

The Hibernus Mittens from Fleece Love and Happiness are meant to be Christmas adjacent, but not so holiday that you don’t want to wear them in the not-Christmas cold season (which, where I live, is almost all of it, since it doesn’t usually get that cold until January).

It’s really the colors that give them a holiday feel, since the colorwork itself isn’t holiday, and blue dominates in the colorwork flowers and diamonds.

These mittens are perfect for intermediate knitters and have lots of fun techniques included. They’re worked from the bottom up with ribbing and a Latvian braid, then the colorwork is charted and has four colors total. There are charts for the back of the hand, the palm and the thumb, but the palm and thumb are an easy checkerboard pattern so you won’t have to follow the chart as you go on those.

The pattern uses super fine yarn and comes in one size for adults. Of course wool yarn would be the best choice here for warmth if you can handle wool on your hands.

You can download the free pattern from the Fleece Love and Happiness blog.

[Photo: Fleece Love and Happiness]

Over the years I have shared a lot of pumpkin knitting patterns, and I’ve knit and crocheted a lot of pumpkins myself. But it feels like there are always more fun things to try with knit pumpkins, so this year I wanted to look a little more beyond basic stockinette or ribbed pumpkins and share some pumpkin patterns with cables, bobbles and colorwork.

In the cable collection we’ve got these cute little basic cable and ribbed pumpkins from Elly Bear Knits. There are two sizes that make a wide, flat pumpkin and a taller round pumpkin. Both are worked in the round as a tube that’s cinched top and bottom when you’re done, and they use bulky weight yarn.

Another cute cable pumpkin knitting pattern comes from Gray Bear Akswokrat. This one is knit flat and it looks like a chunky yarn but you could use other weights to make pumpkins of different sizes. This one also has an I-cord stem and uses yarn to cinch up the sections of the pumpkin, giving it a more natural look.

Add some bobbles to your pumpkins with this design from Autumn Shelter Makes. Also worked in the round in a tube, it features a repeating pattern of bobbles and uses yarn wrapped around the outside to make segments. This one looks like worsted weight yarn to me.

Of course there’s nothing that says your pumpkin has to be a single color, so let’s throw in some colorwork. I love the look of the Cozy Fall Pumpkin knitting pattern from South Stitch Girls. The little leather loop adds a rustic touch but you could also just add a stick. These pumpkins have five colorwork options and are worked in worsted weight yarn in the round.

There’s also the Autumn Fair Isle Trio pumpkins pattern from Equestriann Style, which has three different sizes of pumpkins with four colorwork designs. They are worked in super bulky yarn in the round and look good with high contrast or more muted color combinations.

Have you read?