Wednesday 15 October 2008

The Accidental Girly Mitts

Accidental Girly Mitts


I designed these fingerless mitts during a small burst of knitting inspiration.... and decided to run with it.
I called them the Accidental Girly Mitts because I really didn’t intend on them being so much so. Fluffy yarn + lace + pink/purple = about as girly as you can get!

I've had a few requests for the pattern, so I'll throw a quick one up here. It may be a 'use at your own risk' pattern though, as of course, it hasn't been tested. The basic scallop pattern came from the Harmony Guide to Knitting Stitches, circa 1983. Great year, that was ;-)

Size: Women's medium (these are quite snug, if you have larger hands/wrists, I recommend using a very stretchy yarn or upping your needle size)
Yarn: DK/8ply yarn of your choice.
I used Patons Caressa 45% wool/45% acrylic/10% mohair. Yardage will vary, but I used approx 75g, a lot less than 2 50g balls anyway.
Needles: 4mm/US size 6 or larger if you want bigger mitts.

Abbreviations used:
sl1 - slip 1 stitch knitwise
psso - pass slipped stitch over
k2tog - knit two stitches together
rep - repeat
m1 - make one (increase)
yo - yarn over (increase)


When I was thinking about the stitches I wanted to use, I decided on something that could be knit in the round, or flat, as I wanted to be able to knit them in the round, but I was a little fed up with DPNs and magic loop so decided to knit them flat, at the time...lol.
You could easily knit them in the round by knitting all the purl (even) rows, and then purling row 6 (the knit row), as the lace pattern only appears on the right side.

Cast on 54 stitches
rows 1 - 8: 1x1 rib
continue in scallop lace pattern.

Scallop lace pattern:

section 1:
row 1: k1, *sl1, k1, psso, k9, k2tog* rep to the last st, k1
row 2: purl
row 3: k1, *sl1, k1, psso, k7, k2tog* rep to the last st, k1
row 4: purl
row 5: k1, *sl1, k1, psso, yo (k1, yo) 5 times, k2tog* rep to last st, k1
row 6: knit

section 2:
row 7: as row 1
row 8: as row 2
row 9: as row 3
row 10: as row 4
row 11: k1, *sl1, k1, psso, m1 (k1, m1) 5 times, k2tog* rep to last st, k1
row 12: as row 6

You can repeat these 2 sections in any way that you like to create a pattern.
Mine are set up like this:
ribbing - 1 - 2 - 1 - 1 - 2 - 1 - 1 - 2 - 1 - 1 - 2 - 1 - ribbing

Before you finish with ribbing, complete only rows 1-3 of section 1 (or rows 7-9 if you are finishing with section 2), and then continue on with 1x1 ribbing. Then bind of loosely in rib.

I then seamed up the side, leaving about a 2cm gap for the thumb, just below the top ribbing section. Because of the way the pattern is formed, the seam just looks like another set of decreases running down the side, and isn't noticeable at all!