Quest for the perfect mitts

I do most of my knitting on the bus, and these wintery months I find my hands grow so frigid that I cannot knit (do not mock me, people from places where cold white stuff falls from the sky!). I've been working on developing the perfect mitts so that I can keep my fingers toasty while still permitting me the freedom needed to knit.



I've been enamored with the twisted rib hand/wrist warmers from Joelle Hoverson's Last-Minute Knitted Gifts since I first got the book. The pattern is beautiful yet simple, but not quite right for ten little reasons: naked thumbs and fingers!



This was rectified quite simply by making a few minor changes to the pattern:

First, rather than making a vertical slit for the thumb to exit the mitt, I used scrap yarn (per the method indicated in Fetching) to knit a few stitches when arriving at the spot where the thumb should go, so I could come back later to make an actual thumb. Because naked thumbs are not happy thumbs.

Next, rather than ending them at the knuckles, I kept going until the mitts came up past my pinky and left only the tips of my other fingers showing. The result is not nearly as sexy, but it actually keeps my fingers warm, and still leaves them the freedom to knit. Some may argue that it would have been wiser to make a pair of fingerless GLOVES, rather than tip-less mittens, but for me, those are too restricting to knit with (and with mitts, I can roll my fingers into a fist to keep them all toasty warm and fully tucked inside the mitt).



There was surprisingly no necessary adjusting to the pattern, even though I was using Knitpicks' Decadence (no longer available! boo!) bulky-weight alpaca, and size 7 DPNs (because I do not own needles in a size 6! boo!).

My first thought was that I wanted my mitts to be LONG -- almost up to the elbow -- so that even on those not-quite-warm days when the body is toasty but the hands are still cold, I would be well-equipped. However, this has proved to be problematic when the weather is cold and I am all bundled up in sweaters and jackets, because the extra length of the mitts scrunches at my wrist, causing extra bulk and making it difficult to actually move my wrists.

My friend, Sarah, was enamored by these lovely mitts and asked me to make her a pair to use when typing (a pair exactly like the ones I had just made, she said, because they were perfect). Of course, I wanted to do something slightly different, so I made an attempt at a modified Fetching. I had to make some serious changes to the pattern to make the mitts fit (err, mitt, since I've only done one so far), and ended up making them a little too tight, and the wrist, though substantially shorter, is still impractically long.



So I tried on the original mitts upside-down, and lo and behold! They hit the PERFECT spot on my wrist! However, they are a wee bit too long over the fingers this way, and folding them is not entirely practical for the aforementioned bulk problems.



The good news is that I've finally worked out the perfect solution to my mitt problem: Sarah will be given the so-called perfect pair of mitts, and I will make myself another pair with short wrists! Pattern notes for the Perfect Knitting Mitts, with celebratory photo, will be posted as soon as I have completed them.