mitten mitten bo-bitten

Generic man mitts on the outside, fabulous on the inside. I love these mitts.

I’m usually very restrained in yarn stores, but when I saw mini mochi sock yarn in Intense Rainbow on sale, I couldn’t help myself.  It looked to me like a big soft knittable pride flag and it was clearly made for a friend of mine who has a real thing for colours and textures. He does not knit, but has happily accompanied me to yarn stores just to pet the wool. That is a man who needs two balls of Intense Rainbow.  Perfect.

Then I got home and the inevitable happened.  As the thrill of the catch wore off, the plan started to seem less fool-proof. Although my friend can appreciate the heck out of a skein of Malabrigo, he does it while wearing exclusively grey or black clothes.

After much thought on the seeming contradiction of making a subtle pride accessory out of screaming rainbows, I came up with these mitts.

Here’s what I did:

I knit both the mitts and liners using a generic sore thumb mitten pattern like the ones here or here but without ribbing on the cuff.

The outer mitts are Cascade Eco wool on size 8 (5.0mm) dpns. I cast on 32 stitches and worked about 3″ before beginning the thumb. I added an icord to the cast-on edge.

The liners are Mini mochi on size 4 (3.5mm) dpns. I cast on 40 stitches worked about 1″ before beginning the thumb.  I divided the ball in two and alternated three rows from one half and three from the other.  I worked at quite a loose gauge and checked while I was knitting to make sure the liner would fit in the outer mitt without bunching.

After blocking both parts separately, I folded up the cuff of the outer mitten and stuffed the liners inside with the right side showing. Then I sewed the liner into the mitten.

I think they look nice with the cuffs folded up halfway, but they can be worn with the full-length cuffs on those truly Canadian winter nights when it’s so cold that even the wind has had enough and it’s desperately trying to get in out of the weather by creeping up inside your sleeves where it’s warm.  Plus, they can always be worn inside out.

Oh, and I just re-read this and saw “a man who needs two balls of Intense Rainbow”. Ha. You know what I mean.