One day I saw a post in our local "HomeMADE" Facebook group. A woman had injured her wrist badly and was going to be in various splints for quite a while. She couldn't find anything to keep her hand warm (and it was quite cold that week!). I immediately sprung on it, knowing that making a mitten in ribbing would be awesome. I thought maybe I could even felt the hand portion, leaving the ribbing unfelted. She wanted purple and grey and the only wool that I had both purple and grey in was Moda Dea's "Washable Wool". Which most likely wouldn't felt due to it's chained structure. Oh well.
I got to work swatching on the SK155. Then, I couldn't find my copy of Ann Budd's calculations for mittens! So, I went with what I knew from my 20 years experience (lady's mitten, worsted yarn, 20st/4", Cast on 40sts). I used T3 for the ribbing and T2 for the stockinette. And why did I knit the hand flat when I have a ribber and could have knit it in the round? Ummm. Habit? Well, this is a real "D'oh" moment. Especially since I struggled a bit to get the seaming of the stripes looking good!
After I got part way through the first one I remembered that I had scanned the pattern. Well, I couldn't find the pages with the calculations, but I could find the schematic page so I worked out the rest of the numbers from that.
The second mitt, I cast on 50st instead of 40 and kept the ribbing going up to the top of the thumb separation, and on the thumb, because her thumb was strapped down next to her hand, though there was space between the thumb and the hand. I had trouble increasing in the ribbing for the thumb and it doesn't look all that great along the seam. The seam on the normal mitten is at the non-thumb side, which means I did all the thumb increasing in the middle of the piece and moved all the stitches (one side only) outwards. I just love this type of thumb gusset. I also kept the right thumb in ribbing to stretch easily over the splint.
The mitten feels a bit loose on me but I do prefer snug mittens. And it's not knit as tightly as I would have liked. But she needed it ASAP! And, as luck would have it, she couldn't pick up for a few days and the weather turned warm. Hopefully, with it hovering around 0C now, she can make use of them.
Yarn In: 120gr
Yarn Out: 96gr + 327gr = 423gr
Balance: 303gr more USED than in
Costs: $7.91/25 days = $0.32 per day
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