Making Time

This is not a pattern, it’s instruction for freestyle crochet mittens.

I’m going to start putting in stuff I have done in the past, so it can be more like a scrapbook and ideas space. I wrote these instructions a while back, and I’ve taught people how to make mittens this way.

This is fun and simple, I promise. I have tried making mittens with the three double ended knitting needles before. And that was hell-on-wheels. I ended up feeling, (as usual when I follow patterns) inadequate and unlikely to ever finish a mitten. But crochet is much easier to shape.

Here you can see my buddy modeling the first pair I made. Red and white, since you stop and start mid-mitten, it’s very tempting to add a color. Here they look dipped in red paint.

How To

I use chunky yarn and a 6mm hook, so it all goes quite quickly and the mittens are nice and firm (and warm). I use my left hand as the mannequin. I also made mittens for a big-handed boy-friend (just a boy who is a friend) and I just made it roomier. I made mittens for a four year old and used another pair of mittens as a guide, and accounted for the thickness of the wool I was using.

The easiest way is to start the spirals at the bottom, and work to the top of the thumb. Then you re-start at the upper crotch of the thumb (crotch, gross) and spiral up to the top of the fingers. Like so:

I use the single crochet stitch (called double crochet in british patterns) throughout, and I go under the entire loop with thinner yarns, not just front or back. This makes a nice firm fabric- and keeps the stitch even instead of rippling. BUT with thicker yarns, I only go through the back loop, as it does not need to be so tight. This makes the inside have these ridges, and the outside have a square pattern.

You increase at the base of the thumb; you decrease at the tip of the thumb, the crotch of the thumb and the tip of the fingers. It takes a few tries of testing (and ripping out) to find the amount of cast-on stitches which are best. You have to crochet up a few rows as a wrist-band to test how it pulls over your hand. Like so:

For one pair, I made a little ladder around the bottom and wove a white chain through it, and put a little flower at the side. Like so:

This entry was posted on Friday, February 10th, 2006 at 5:05 am and is filed under Helpful hints. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.