Mommy Mittens!

Over the winter, I was working on a pair of mittens for someone. They wanted adult mittens that had a small child’s mitten sewn right on it, so the child could hold Mommy’s hand and have a warm hand. I had never made mittens using the loom before, so I scoured the web for directions and found http://luvtoloom.wordpress.com/2006/03/23/one-loom-mitten/ , which suggested using the blue loom. I did, and here’s how the practice one came out:

I used Homespun candy apple red and deco (cream white). For the child’s mitten I just used the pink loom and knit off on 10 pegs. Once I got to the thumb I cut the yarn and knit the hand part separately from the thumb. Here’s the back:

It came out good, so I went ahead and knit the real pair:

I thought they came out pretty good for the first time! But they turned out to be way too big! So I remade them, this time making up my own directions. I used the pink loom and a purple loom clip this time, after I took measurements of her hand. Her hand was about half the size of the original mittens I made!

So I decided not to follow the directions for mittens I had found online but make up my own. To make my version, I did a 1 over 1 e-wrap stitch on the pink loom on 16 pegs for 10 rows and then created the cuff by putting the first row back onto the loom and knitting over. Then I did 1 over 2 e-wrap stitch for 15 rows and then made the thumb by knitting on 6 pegs (where I wanted the thumb to be) 1 over 2 e-wrap back and forth for 19 rows. Then I continued making the rest of the mitten for 25 rows, knitting over the entire 16 pegs. Bind off and start the next mitten. For the child’s “mitten” I used 8 pegs to make a flat panel 1 over 2 e-wrap stitch for 40 rows. Then I loosely bound off the mitten body from the loom. Then on 6 pegs I knitted the thumb 1 over 2 for 20 rows. I then sewed the thumb onto the hand where I thought it should be. You may want to adjust the size of the child’s mitten, I made it big so that the mom could use it again next season and the child’s hand would still fit. Then I sewed the child’s mitten on the adult mitten with the deco yarn, starting to sew from inside the glove so I could tie it off unseen. Repeat for the second mitten.

For an added bit of “specialty,” I carefully threaded the yarn needle with an elastic band and poked it through the cuff so that it was inside the cuff, and went around the inside of the cuff with the elastic. Then I tied it on the inside, so that the cuff of the mitten was slightly elastic and would still cover your wrist.