My friend needed a mitten because her arm was in plaster and that meant her mittens were all too small. I couldn’t find any patterns online, so I improvised.
The mitten needed to be easy to put on and taken off, therefore i opted for no ribbing. She bought some very nice wool.
I worked stranded so that it would be extra warm, so the first step was to wind two balls.
Here are my approximate instructions.
Cast on 60 stitches, knit stocking stitch. Work in a stranded/fair isle way throughout.
The thumb is a simple Norwegian one: put one-third of the stitches (ten) on scrap wool, cast on the same number of stitches and knit the thumb later by picking up two stitches on each side. I kept up the double thickness with stranded knitting on the thumb too. The thumb didnt need to be long. (Techknitter advice - cast on 2 stitches less than you need and re-add them when you come to knit the first row of thumb, to avoid gaps.)
If you can have the recipient try the mitten on, start decreasing when appropriate on alternative rows. I did a ‘half Norwegian finish, using kitchener stitch to close the top, a bit like socks. The mittens could have been shorter in fact.
Lessons learned: because i was doing stranded knitting, i was knitting 4 stitches with one ball and either 4 stitches with the other, or i tried 1 of one and 4 of the other. You need to space the changes so that they dont line up over each other on each row, otherwise the knitting will pucker. You can see the puckering under the thumb.