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Mitts to Knit for the Whole Family

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One year I decided I wanted to knit everyone (all the women, anyway) in the family fingerless gloves. I think I knit them for my daughter’s teachers, too. There were mitts everywhere, all the time.

I love fingerless mitts because I wear them in the house throughout the winter. They’re great for teachers who have outdoor duty or anyone who gets cold hands. In my experience kids like them better than mittens because they can still use their fingers, but of course they’re not great for playing in the snow.

If you want to knit mitts for everyone this year, check out Mitt the Family from Neisha Abdulla. These DK weight mitts are worked seamlessly in the round, and they’re sized from toddler to large adult. The stitch pattern even makes them reversible, so you can turn them over if they get stained. As a person who spills coffee a lot that’s a big selling point.

The pattern in all five sizes is available from Ravelry for €2.50 or about $3.08.

[Photo: Neisha Abdulla.]

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. 

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Comments

  1. I knitted full mitts for the xmas shoeboxes for years. Then my friend accompanied them in the truck from the UK to Rumania. She said fingerless mitts were much prized over full mitts. Though many very poor villagers lived in a state of poverty we’d find unacceptable, many had smartphones so needed fingers free, indoors in unheated homes as well as outdoors, so I make them now. Thanks for these new patterns.

Have you read?

Knit a Sweet Striped Vest for Kids

I’m trying to include more knits for kids in my posts because I know a lot of people do a lot of their knitting for the little ones in their lives. 

This child’s striped vest from Lion Brand Yarn is not only cute and great for kids who might find a full sweater too hot, it’s also an easy project if you’ve never knit a garment before. 

Lion Brand rates it as level 2 easy/beginner +, probably just because there’s a little shaping and seaming invovled, but it’s nothing you can’t handle. 

The pattern comes in three sizes that are meant to be for ages 6, 8 and 10. The finished chest measurement is 30, 31.5 or 33 inches, which is 76, 80 and 84 cm respectively. This makes the vest a little roomy and makes it easy to slip on over a T-shirt or other top. 

It’s worked in two pieces from the bottom up, with the neckband and armhole bands worked in the round after the body pieces are sewn together. One benefit of knitting stripes on a project like this is that it’s easier to make sure your pieces are the same length because you can just count the stripes (it’s also a little easier to seam because you’re always lining up the stripes). 

If you’re knitting the smallest size, you only need one skein each of the two colors you choose, and for the larger sizes you will only need two, making this project a pretty good value. The suggested yarn is Color Theory, a worsted weight acrylic yarn that comes in 18 relatively muted colors. Of course you can use any worsted weight yarn you like. Keep it acrylic for easy washing or use wool to make this a warmer garment for kids who live in cooler climates. 

You can grab the pattern for free from the Lion Brand website, or get a kit that includes the yarn you need (and needles if you don’t have them already). I think this would be a great basic to knit a kid for back to school in their school colors, or make it holiday with red and green, or whatever colors the child likes. 

[Photo: Lion Brand Yarn]