My family sometimes does a yarn swap for Christmas. Everyone puts in a skein of yarn in a brown bag. Then the bags are mixed up. Then you draw a name and then you take turns taking a brown bag of mystery yarn. My daughter was supposed to knit up the blue/grey wool which my mother spun for my sister. The project never quite got done and so I took the yarn and decided to make a pair of mitts for my sister to wear when she walks her Samoyeds in Wisconsin.

The ball of this two-ply yarn weighed 180 grams. Using a size 4 needle, the gauge was 17 stitches for 3 inches. This pair of mitts used 130 grams of wool.

Here are the directions to knit the mitts

1. cast on 44 stitches for each mitten
2. knit 1.5 inches of twisted ribbing in knit 1, purl 1. Twisted ribbing is when you knit in the back of the knit stitches.
3. Increase 6 stitches evenly around each mitten to 50 stitches. Place marker in so you have 24 stitches on one side and 26 stitches on other.
   Be careful when you place the marker. You want the 26 stitch panel to be on opposite sides of each mitt so you that you end up with a right and a left hand.
4. Using the Quartered Diamond pattern from Barbara Walker’s book A Treasury of Knitting Patterns, knit this design two times. Instead of doing her fancy side braid, I used a right twist to get a cable border.
   The Quartered Diamond pattern required 18 stitches so I added 2 purl stitches and 2 knit stitches for the front of each mitten:
   2 knit / 2 purl / 18 stitches of Quartered Diamond / 2 purl / 2 knit = 26 stitches
5. Knit 3 rows of the Quartered Diamond pattern, and then start the thumb gusset at the marker for each mitten.
6. Thumb Gusset
   In the stitch after the marker, knit front and back.
   On the purl side, just purl as you would normally.
   Next knit row, increase two stitches by knitting the front and back of the outermost stitch of the gusset. You might want to put in markers to mark the gusset stitches so you make the increases in the outermost side stitches.
   Continue to increase the thumb gusset on each knit row on either side until you have 16 thumb gusset stitches. Put these 16 stitches on a string and increase 1 stitch over the gap.
7. Continue knitting the Quartered Diamond Pattern until you have finished 2 repeats over 40 rows.
8. Decrease stitches for a better fit (optional)
   You might want to decrease the width of the mitt so it conforms more to your hand. I decreased these after finished the first repeat of the Quartered Diamond or after knitting 20 rows. You can do the decreases in two ways or a combination of each — it all depends on how snugly you want the mitt to fit the hand.
   1. Decrease 1 stitch in the middle of the hand (above the thumb gusset) every .75 inches
   2. Knit straight for 4 inches. Then decrease 3 stitches across the palm. If you want the mitt to narrow a bit more, you could do a couple of one stitch decreases in the middle of the hand above the thumb gusset.
      I had 40 stitches at the top of my mitts eventually.
9. Finish the top of the mitt with 5 rows of knit 1 / purl 1 ribbing where the knit stitches were twisted by knitting through the back of the knit stitches. How many rows of ribbing you do is really up to you — do what you think looks nice.
10. Cast off in ribbing. Each mitt is 8 inches long and 7.5 inches wide.

8 inches long

7.5 inches wide

Now here is the fun part — decorating the Quartered Diamonds.

One reason these mitts are just perfect for my sister is that they are made of the yarn from the Christmas swap of about 3 years ago and the decoration is inspired by a book she gave me for my birthday — again about three years ago. The book is Anna Zilboorg’s Splendid Apparel in which she shows you how to embellish knitted fabric with embroidery.

I dove into my collection of tapestry wool to find colors to pop on the dark grey/blue background. All the embroidery was done with two strands of Persian wool yarn.

First, I used green woold to embroider Palestrina knots in the valley between the diamonds.

Second, I used peach and purple wool to fill each of the little diamonds with a cross stitch flower.

Third, I used mauve wool to embroider lazy daisy loops to fill either side of the diamonds.

Fourth, I used gold wool to add French knots in the center of each of the lazy daisy flowers.

I am really pleased with how the embroidery of the fronts of each mitt came out. But here is a picture so you can see what the working side or back side looks like. It gets a little messy with all the different ends of colored wool.

Sew the side of the mitts

Carefully match the sides of the mitts together and sew up the sides. working from to the middle from the top and bottom.

Finishing the thumb — do this for each mitt

Using number 4 double points, I picked up the 16 stitches from the yarn holder and picked up two extra stitches across the gap for a total of 18 stitches. I knit 4 rows plain and then 5 rows in knit 1 / purl 1 ribbing. Then I cast off in ribbing. As I write this blog, I realize that I forgot to twist the ribbing for the thumb. But I don’t think my sister will mind!

Time to sew in the ends. I am always careful when sewing in the ends of yarn that I use this as an opportunity to gently close any gaps where the thumb meets the hand. But don’t pull the yarn too tight or the fabric will get too tight and be uncomfortable for the person wearing the mitts.

What is the time investment? 

How much time did I spend on these? Well, here are my best guestimates. The embroidery and the thumb knitting took about 5 hours. Knitting both mitts took about 8 hours. Total time making these unique and one of a kind mitts for my sister: 13 hours.