Evolving a Better MItt

I love mitts. I have fat little hands with stubby fingers, and they get cold easily. Mitts are the perfect things for me to wear while reading in bed, working at the computer, working in a cold garage (where all the teacher stuff is stored), or driving in the car on cold days. I even pull them over my mittens when it is really nasty out and I have to shovel snow. They are fast to make, and because they are small I feel OK using some luxury type yarns on them like cashmere blends. They are a fun way to try out new yarns and colors to see how they will work out. I love hand-painted yarns, but sometimes they don’t look the way I think they will knitted up. Mitts are the perfect way to sample without making a big investment.

I found a mitt pattern that was simple but nice on Ravelry.  It was ribbed in K2, P2 ribbing with a single cable on the back of the hand. I grabbed my needles, cast on and knitted the mitt.

Oops! The knitting seemed too loose. The cable twisted over too great a distance and wouldn’t stay on the back of my hand. The thumb gusset was too short, and my thumb didn’t have a comfortable range of motion without pulling on the mitt. The mitts were just too dang long on my arm. But I still liked the idea of the pattern.

Obviously, there needed to be some changes. If you consider the original pattern to be the code (DNA) for the mitts, I was introducing mutations into the code with each change. I started knitting again with more stitches on smaller needles. I started the gusset lower on the mitt so that it would start exactly at my wrist and would be in the same place as the twist of the cable. I slowed down the rate of increases; instead of adding two stitches every other row I tried adding stitches every third row. The gusset was moved over so it would begin in the middle of a K2 rib, and after a couple of false starts I had something that looked good to me.

I liked where I was going with the mitt, but I kept on mutating the pattern. I shortened up the ribbing sections at the bottom and top of the mitt so that the mitt would have more room for cable action. I moved the start of the thumb gusset over so that there would be more stitches on the top of the mitt and fewer on the palm; the tension of the stretched palm rib stitches held the cable in place on the other side of the mitt.

I made the cable twist every 10 rows so I could get three twists onto the cable. Now I had about 6 new pairs of mitts, but I had managed to create the pattern for a mitt that I just loved. Natural selection had evolved me a better mitt!

This is the basic design of the mitt that evolved over a number of weeks as I kept trying out new variations of the pattern.

I love this mitt! Did I mention that I wear them while reading? I can also knit them while reading (but not quickly!) I’m now working on writing up the pattern (or the genetic code for this mitt…), which is harder than it looks. 🙂

Author: Midnight Knitter

I weave, knit and read in Aurora, Colorado where my garden lives. I have 2 sons, a knitting daughter-in-law, a grandson and two exceptionally spoiled kittens. In 2014 I was diagnosed with a serious rare autoimmune disease called systemic sclerosis along with Sjogren's Disease and fibromyalgia. View all posts by Midnight Knitter