I have been trying different types of patterns - lace knitting, self-striping yarns, twisted stitches, cables. And I’ve decided that my personal favorite projects are simple construction -- nothing that requires careful gauge to get the right size -- in lovely materials. These mitts are perfect - in cushy soft and lushly colored Malabrigo, simple ribbing that hugs and warms the wrists. My style exactly.

I cast on 44 with size 7 needles. I switched to size 6s as called for in the pattern once the arm-warmer neared the wrist.

Modifications

I struggled with the thumb gusset. I pulled it out a couple of times. I did pick up one purl stitch on each side of the two picked up knit stitches, which I then decreased in the next row. That plus duplicate stitch to close the open stitches around the gusset worked ok….I had to pull that out a couple of times as well because it made it too stiff if I overdid the duplicate stitch.

For the second mitt, I tried a hybrid between EZ’s thumb trick and the gusset written in the pattern. The pattern calls for putting the thumb gusset stitches on a stitch holder and leaving them aside while I finished the top of the hand and then working them last.

Instead, I used scrap yarn to bind off the first six stitches of the gusset together (using 3 needle bind off to to make a folded set of 6), knit the middle two, and then bound off the last six gusset stitches together (again with a three needle bind off). Then, instead of picking up two knit stitches at the top of the thumb gusset, I was able to knit the two across the scrap yarn with the main yarn. It seemed to hold the thumb stitches closer to the body of the mitt, but picking up the stitches to do the thumb was a confusion. Maybe I need to practice that some more…!