For an idea of why I was going through so much trouble to make a mitten, well, here’s the one I made next to the one I try to cram my hand into every day in the winter:

Of course, the warmer weather will be here any day now (right? Right???), so this might be of limited use this year. But I’m happy with it all the same.

…

What do you mean, I’m supposed to make two of them?

Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to introduce to you my Appropriately-Sized-Mitten Prototype.

(This is the best all-over shot I could get before the batteries in my camera died. You’ll see a possible cause for this in a minute.)

Some of you may remember my first attempt to make a mitten (intending it for a *child* no less!)

(For an idea of scale think “oven mitt”.)

I was a bit wary of trying again; that is, until the temperature here dropped. I wore my winter coat the other day for the first time this season, and when I shoved my hands in the pockets I found one mitten. That’s when I remembered that I’d lost its twin last winter. I do have several other pairs of mittens, but they are still packed away somewhere. Clearly the answer here was to try again to make a pair. (What do you mean, “Why don’t you just unpack already?” Who’s side are you on?)

I grabbed some Bernat Satin and went to it.

I started by using the same pattern of stitches I used on some coffee cup cozies I made last year:

ch 13
sc in second chain from hook, 11 more sc across, ch1, turn.
12 sc, back loop only, ch 1 turn (repeat this as many times as needed. I did 30, but I think that was a few too many)
hold the last row against the first row, and sc them together to form the cuff.

Next I sc around one end, doing on sc at the end of each row of the cuff, and joining. I figured this would be easier to work with.

I then lifted up 36 loops to start the Tunisian Knit Stitch part. To work Tunisian in the round you need a double-ended hook and two balls of yarn. The loops I lifted up were green, and I worked them off with red. Because I’m like that. ^_^

I kept trying it on as I went, so I could keep an eye out for the thumb placement. To leave a hole, I did 6 yo, and skipped 6 stitches, then kept on going. It was a bit tricky working those yo off, but I managed. It seemed to work ok, anyway.

Trying it out; I did this a lot while making this mitten!

And the back:

Once I passed the thumbhole, I kept going with the Tunisian Knit Stitch until I almost reached the tips of my fingers. I then did a series of decreases that I don’t really like, so I’m not going to do them that way next time. ^_^

I did a few more decreases once I felt it was long enough, then did a sort of drawstring gather that didn’t really work too well. I ended up “fixing” a lot of the problems it caused when I was weaving in the green end.

I went back to the thumbhole and worked it the same way as the rest of the mitten, just with fewer stitches. I picked up 6 sts each on the bottom and top of the hole, as well as an extra stitch on either side.

I was quite pleased to see how well the stitches blended in.

I didn’t quite make the thumb long enough for my liking (I was terribly excited that I was nearly finished. Also, I really need to get a shorter double-ended-hook if I’m going to keep making mittens this way; 14 inches is *way* too much for 6 or 7 stitches!)

I do like how I finished the tip of the thumb, though, and will have to try it for the tip of the fingers on the next one. I did a few decreases on the last round, then bound it off with slip stitches like you would when finishing any other Tunisian project. Then I used the long tail I left to weave through the slip stitches and pulled it closed like a drawstring. This worked much better!

The really fun part about this mitten?

It’s reversible!

A closer shot:

Things to do on the next one:

- don’t decrease on the hand part until a round or two from the end
- longer thumb
- some kind of stitch around the bottom of the cuff for a more finished look
- find a stitch for the top of the cuff that won’t leave little holes
- join the Navy