A Bunch of Little Squares

 After finishing the duck socks, I got a strong craving to knit another pair of mittens. I quickly picked 3 colors from the stash, a stitch pattern from one of my books, and made these.

Pattern: None. Just something I've put together, Estonian style.

Size: Womans Medium

Yarn: Valley Yarns Huntington
Content: 75% Merino, 25% Nylon, Fingering weight.
Color: White

Yarn: Red Heart Heart and Sole
Content: 70% Superwash Wool/30% Nylon, Fingering weight
Color: Navy

Yarn: Opal Uni Solid 4ply
Content: 75% Superwash Wool/25% Nylon, Fingering weight
Color: 1413 Fuschia

Needles: Circular size 2

Started: September 15, 2024
Finished: October 1, 2024

Comments: I love these! I custom fit them to my own hands. They feel wonderful. The stitch pattern came from my newly acquired book The Big Book of Latvian Mittens, though I altered it a bit so it's not exactly the same.

Back

I was reading one of my mittens books and learned the thumbs are knit in a stranded pattern for the warmth. It makes the fabric at least double thick. I have seen patterns where the thumb and fingers are knit in plain stockinette and they are not as warm.

Front

I absolutely love the color combination. The pattern was surprisingly easy to knit too. I had it memorized very quickly and it knit up very fast.

Stitch pattern detail

I had a few different choices for decreasing the thumbs. I chose the easiest one, which was having a center stitch on each side that always was knit with the background color of the row, and decreasing either side of those center stitches. My tension is still rather sloppy when I get to the small circumference part of any knitting. Hopefully it will improve in time.

Thumb

About the cuff. I got the idea from gloves and mittens being sold in the NordicMittens Etsy store. Külli Jacobs, who knits for and owns it, is kind of my knitting hero. She does such beautiful work and I've been inspired by her to pursue excellence in my knitting and got me started making Estonian mittens.

 

Cuff

 I actually bought a pair of her gloves during the summer just so I could look at them close up. They're going to be so warm this winter. Anyway, the cuff is basically a 12 stitch feather and fan pattern. I knit 5 rows MC, 1 row CC, 4 rows MC, 2 rows CC, 3 rows MC, 3 rows CC, 2 rows MC, 4 rows CC, 1 row MC, and 5 rows CC. Then I started repeating it all again just to add the small amount of length I needed to finish the cuff.

This next picture is for the knitters out there. We like to see the inside of stranded knitted items just to check out how even the floats are.

Inside

This is next pic shows the only mistake I made. I started and ended both mittens on the same row of the pattern, there's exactly the same number of rows, but for whatever reason, they didn't end the same. I decreased to 10 stitches left, then I finished with a 3 needle bind off. I have no idea why the pink squares are off or how it happened-yet. I need to sit and study them a bit. Oddly, this does not bother me. I would enter them in the fair..

Top tips

I'm looking forward to wearing them this very-soon-coming winter.

It's a beautiful sunny day today. The sky is so clear and it smells like fall already. It's pretty chilly out though. Tomorrow should be back in the 70's. I'm planning on being out on the deck for awhile.

Live long and prosper. \\//