Project Notebook: Kid’s Fingerless Mitts

During a recent really cold snap, my daughter was complaining about how cold her hands get when she washes her hands. She’s five, so just turning on the warm water is out of the question.

I suggested I could knit her some mitts that she could wear in the house when her hands are cold (like I do most of the time in winter) and she was agreeable. I asked her what color she wanted and she found some gray yarn sitting out, left over from a recently finished project I hope to tell you more about soon, and said she wanted me to use that.

I whipped up a prototype that same evening and it seemed to fit, so I made the second after bedtime and they were ready to go the next day.

She first said she didn’t want to wear them to school because she couldn’t fit her hands in her pockets when she wore them, but she’s since realized she can wear them over her gloves for even more warmth, and I knit another version in red and orange which she likes a lot better. (Here’s the project on Ravelry, too.)

This is a really great, simple pattern for mitts for a little one that includes instructions on how to resize to fit different hands. I can attest that they’re really quick and easy since I knit four of them in a span of a few evenings. They’re also pretty darn cute and I’m thinking hard about a grownup version.

What’s on or off your needles recently? I’d love to hear about it!

I guess I must have had this pattern on my mind, because I had chosen this log cabin blanket recipe to write about, promptly forgot about it and a couple of weeks later started knitting a log cabin blanket using all my pink yarn.

It might stay pink if it makes it to baby blanket sized, or I might add in some pastel green and blue, too, to make a bigger blanket. We’ll see. I’m also holding several strands of yarn together to make a kind of bulky yarn, which means it’s deeply satisfying how much yarn is used even as the project is still relatively small.

In Kristen Finlay’s version, DK weight yarn scraps (or fingering/sock yarn held double) are used to make a simple scrappy log cabin blanket that’s lighter weight than my version. Log cabin is a great technique for knitters of any skill level because it’s worked in garter stitch. The only not completely basic technique you need for log cabin knitting is picking up stitches.

If you’ve never worked a log cabin knitting project before, this is a good introduction, and it is really nice to use all your yarn scraps in one big project you’ll use for years to come.

If you use a lot of DK weight yarn you can keep building on it whenever you finish a project, or if you use more worsted weight you can do the same thing with it, it will just be a little bigger starting out than the pattern calls for. How big it gets is totally up to you.

I have really been enjoying working on my log cabin project, and it’s my current sitting at my desk and need a break knit (do you have one of those or is it just me?).

Ready to start your own log cabin blanket knitting project? You can grab the free pattern from Kristen Finlay on Ravelry.

Need more log cabin inspiration? Check out more log cabin knitting patterns.

[Photo: Kristen Finlay]

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