What are easy fingerless mitten knitting instructions?

I’m typing while wearing one fingerless mitten.

Why?

Well, my fingers were cold and I decided to experiment. I was curious to know how fast I’d notice a difference between the two hands, I decided to try just one.

In less than 10 seconds I noticed an improvement in the hand wearing the mitten. Wow! What a surprise! I always thought they’d warm the hands but not the fingers. Now if I could just knit that fast.

While I like mittens and gloves, fingerless ones are better sometimes. For example, when you’re working at a keyboard, wearing regular mittens make typing impossible. Most gloves are cumbersome — at best. If your fingers don’t slip off the keys while wearing them, gloves are often bulky or just don’t feel right.

Fingerless mittens or gloves solve these problems.  They allow you to use the keyboard or mouse on a computer comfortably and don’t get in your way.

What’s the difference between fingerless gloves and fingerless mittens? While I don’t have an official answer from the Fashion Gurus, my take is that fingerless gloves have four openings for individual fingers. Their length can be as short as one or two rows, or go all the way to the fingertips.  Fingerless mittens, on the other hand, have a single opening for four fingers. And they’re definitely faster to knit!

While fingerless glove knitting instructions can be complex and best suited for an experienced knitter, fingerless mittens can be quick and easy. Yes, for beginners, too!

So what are the steps for knitting Easy Garter Stitch Fingerless Mittens?

1. Check the gauge. The gauge for this pattern is 3.5 stitches per inch in garter stitch. I used Caron’s One Pound Yarn in Sunflower (yellow) and Royalty (blue). It’s a worsted weight acrylic and knits up soft. I used size 9 needles.

2. Measure your hand. Using a tape measure or even a piece of yarn, measure around your palm above the thumb.

3. Cast on:

• 6.5-inch hand = 22 stitches
• 7-inch hand = 24 stitches
• 7.5-inch hand = 26 stitches
• 8-inch hand = 28 stitches
• 8.5 inch hand = 30 stitches

Knitting Tip: Check the size as you knit. It’s amazing how many times the knitting can vary once you actually cast on the rows.  Although mittens are fairly forgiving, it’s still easier to make adjustments early in the knitting rather than after the mitten is almost finished.

4. Knitting pattern:

Row 1: Slip first stitch as if to purl. Knit across rest of row. Turn.

Repeat Row 1 for desired length from cuff to top of mitten.

Change colors to add stripes if you wish.  I changed colors on the wrong side after four rows of blue and two of yellow:

Slipping the first stitch as if to purl makes a slipped edge garter stitch, which I’ve explained further in my free video knitting instructions.

5. Bind off loosely with your favorite method. Break yarn.

6. Sew up the side seam, leaving an opening for the thumb. (Hint: Trying on the mitten after sewing up part of the seam helps you place the thumb opening, customizing its fit!)

7. Weave in the yarn ends.

While you can add color by knitting stripes, another easy method is called mosaic knitting.  You carry only one color at a time and can make interesting patterns with it:

This particular pattern makes a thicker mitten. Which is probably why I decided to make a pair!

My PDF pattern for Easy Two-Color Mosaic Fingerless Mittens is now available on Ravelry.

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Knitting Instructions: What’s an elastic loose bind off (cast off)?

When ready to bind off my first toe-up knee sock, I nearly didn’t.

The knitting instructions for my socks said to “bind off loosely.”  With other projects, I’d been able to bind off loosely using one or two tried-and-true methods. A sock was different.

No matter which method I tried, it just didn’t stretch enough to get it on around my heel, let alone over my calf.  I searched all my knitting instruction books without help.  None of them have toe-up sock, top-down hat or finger-down mitten knitting instructions.

In reviewing this, it seems to be a fairly common dilemma.  Socks need to be snug enough on the calf to not fall down, and the usual loose bind-offs, often aren’t elastic enough.

So, just how do you bind off loosely?

1. Knit more loosely as you bind off either by adjusting the tension or by substituting a larger needle for the right-hand needle. Neither gave enough stretch for socks.
2. Use a sewed bind-off, such as Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Sewn Casting-off  from Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitter’s Almanac.   While she suggested using it for top down sweaters, again it just wasn’t quite elastic enough.
3. Knit with an elastic bind off method.  An Internet search led to Slip Slip Knit’s Miraculous Elastic Bind Off Knitting Instructions. And voila, it worked!  The link even includes nice pictures.

This bind-off has now become one of my favorites. And I can hardly wait to try it on other projects.

These socks were made with Wendy Knits’ Sprucey Lucy free knitting pattern.

For a great inexpensive reference for knitting, check out Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitter’s Almanac. It’s full of projects for every month of the year, and manages to be both charming and informative.

A neat little yarn tip

When you buy enough yarn to finish a project, there’s often some left over.

The alternative, however, is to not have enough yarn.  Which can be even more frustrating … especially if you’re trying to match dye lots.  Or, if you’re blessed with hand-dyed, maybe there is no more of that dye lot.

After a project, sometimes there’s just not enough of a ball left to hold its shape.  Leaving it unwound invites all kinds of tangled messes before you can use it.

For years, I rewound yarn the way I was taught as a child.  You may have been taught the same way: wind around three or four fingers, and then slip it off and wind a ball.  You’ve probably noticed the problem with this method: when using the yarn from the center, the center tends to pop out in a clump, sometimes with more yarn than you want … and sometimes with a tendency to tangle.

Of course, a ball winder will alleviate this problem: sometimes though it’s not convenient or in the budget.  My sister, who spins, has a short dowel she uses to wind her yarn.  She makes lovely yarn balls with it.

However, I keep forgetting to look for a dowel in my infrequent trips to the hardware store.  So, I decided to improvise.

With a pencil!

Here’s the technique:

First, you wind a strand down and around the bottom.  Since this is a small ball of yarn, I didn’t use the whole length of the pencil.

Wind horizontally next …

Then just wind your ball …

The yarn will slip off the pencil (or dowel), with the center loose enough to easily use.

The pencil was fine for small balls of yarn, but I needed something larger for bigger balls …

Next I tried a highlighter. Checking first to be sure it wasn’t leaking!

Not quite ideal because the diameter was larger than optimal, and it’s a bit difficult to pull off the highlighter.

A tapered end would work better, and the ball would slip off more easily. And, inspiration struck!

One of my size 15 tips from my Denise Knitting Needles from Alpaca Direct! It’s the right diameter — more or less — and its tapered ends make sliding the ball off smooth and easy. Instead of wrapping the yarn around the end of the needle tip, I just made a U shape to start, then wound the ball.

And voila …

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