F is for Forging ahead

Okay, so our edging is done, the gusset is ahead; in the meantime there's a few inches of plain knitting to fly through.  After I finished joining the cuff, I brought the yarn tail forward, so it would mark the beginning of the rounds.

You could also mark this stitch with a safety pin or a locking stitch marker - anything that will help you keep track of where your rounds start and stop.  Ma might have purled the last stitch of every round, a detail that almost every period stocking and sock would have had, mimicking the seam on old-fashioned sewn stockings, but also having the very practical purpose of marking the beginning of the rounds, where to place decreases for a shaped leg, and keeping track of stitch counts through the heel turn.

From here to the wrist I can just knit every stitch in every round until the cuff is long enough.  I like my mittens to have a long cuff - I have long arms, and coat sleeves tend to leave several inches of my arm bare to the fierce winds of Midwestern fall and winter.  I put longer cuffs on my kids' mittens too - for toddlers the extra long cuff makes it harder for them to pull them off when I'm not looking, and my boys have a frustrating tendency to start outgrowing their winter jackets right in the middle of the season, when I'm hoping to get a few more weeks of wear so that I can get their new coats when they go on clearance.  A couple extra inches on the mittens lends itself to frugality - keeping rapidly-elongating wrists warm until those 1/2 OFF! signs start appearing.  Four inches should be sufficient. Upon actually attempting this, it turns out that four inches is far too long. A smidge over three inches is plenty long enough, looks more balanced, and doesn't shove shirt sleeves around so much.

This would be a fine section to be knitting by firelight, after the lamps had been turned down and the girls were in bed and couldn't see that Ma was doing Santa's work.

E is for Edging

My mitten begins with 44 stitches, cast on using the backwards loop method, over two US size 2 double pointed needles held together. This creates a nice, loose edge that will stretch easily to admit a hand, and will also be easy to pick up stitches from later on. The 44 stitches divide evenly over four needles, and I join in the round and knit every stitch for about an inch.

If I just keep knitting every stitch, the bottom edge of the mitten curls up into a rolled edging that no amount of blocking will keep flat.

To avoid this, I could have alternated the rounds of the first inch with knitting and purling for a garter stitch edge, or I could have opted to do the entire cuff in ribbing, two of the most common ways to keep roll-happy stockinette stitch in check.

The mittens I'm using for reference, however, appear to have a faced, or folded, hem, so that is the edging technique I am using. After that first inch of all knit rows, I purl one round, and then continue knitting.

This creates a line where the fabric naturally wants to fold inward, because of the same stitch tension that causes the knit rounds to fold outward. When I fold the bottom edge up to the inside, that round of purls creates a new, very tidy edging.

I keep knitting until there's about an inch of rounds above the turning ridge.

When folded up to the inside, the cast-on edge lines up with the stitches on the needles. On the next round, as I insert my working needle into each stitch, I also pick up a loop off the cast-on, and work them as one, like a K2tog decrease.

This was hard to get a picture of, but you can see the needle in the first loop, next to it the second loop, and my thumbnail is pointing to the third loop, so you have an idea where loops on the cast-on edge are

After I've done this all the way around, joining each live stitch with a loop from the cast-on, the edge is completely secured, and I have a lovely folded hem.

If joining the hem as you go is too much stitch juggling for you, it may be simpler to whip-stitch the edge to the inside after you've finished knitting the mitten, but personally I never sew when knitting can get the job done just as neatly.  You could also leave the hem completely unattached, and pick up the lining directly from the cast-on edge, which I probably would have done if I wasn't so enamored of the join-as-you-go method.  As it is, the join leaves a little ridge on the inside that will work just as well as a place to pick up the stitches later on.

PS, if instead of a purl row, you (YO, K2tog) across the turning row, the end result will be a picot hem, which is an adorable, feminine edging option.

D is for Decoding the Design

I'm modeling the mitten that I'm going to make (wait, is it M day already?) on a picture that I pilfered from Pinterest (or P day?).

The link from the pin is broken, but the caption says that it's a boy's mitten from ca. 1858-1863, which is about fifteen years too early, but since mitten design hasn't changed much in the last 70 years (compare this pattern from 1940 to this pattern from 2007, I think we can safely say what they were knitting in 1858 probably isn't too far off from what Ma was knitting in 1874.  

So what can we deduce from this historical sample?

Starting at the bottom: there's no obvious edging - no garter trim or ribbing to keep the bottom edge from curling, and while the caption says that it has an orange knit lining, it's not visible in the part of the picture that shows the inner edge of one mitten, but it is definitely stockinette on the inside, too, so the edge is probably faced - folded up  to the inside, and sewn down, or - more likely - joined to the live stitches as the knitter worked up the hand.  You can just about see the line where the double thickness of the folded up edge ends, about an inch from the bottom.  The mitten on the right side of the picture looks like it might have some decreases in the cuff, adding to the flared effect, but not enough for me to bother trying to duplicate it.

The increases for the thumb gusset are unusually placed.  Instead of new stitches always being placed on the outside of the previous increases - growing into the thumb, the new stitches are placed inside the previous increases - growing out into the hand.  It makes it less intuitive which stitches to divide for the thumb.  The number of stitches between the increases is hard to measure, possibly four or five?

Decreases are done like a flat sock toe rather than spiraling.  Probably a three-needle bind-off on the right-side mitten, the one in the left side of the picture looks as though it might have a drawn-through bind off.  

The gauge looks like it might be 8-10 stitches to the inch, but the resolution makes it difficult to count.  

If anyone knows anything about the original source or how to find out more about these mittens, please let me know in the comments!

C is for Calculations

Any time you knit something, you should first make a gauge swatch - a small square of knitting from the yarn and needles you think you'll be using.  It gives you a chance to see if the resulting fabric has the qualities you want in your finished piece, and, if you're working from a pattern, to make sure that you're matching the numbers the designer used.  If you're not getting the same number of stitches and rows per inch, your finished object will not be right size.

I hate making swatches.  I want to knit a mitten, not an aimless tube.  However, without an existing pattern, I don't know how many stitches to cast on for a mitten, so a gauge swatch I must make.

I cast on some 30 odd stitches, and since I was going to be working in the round, I made my swatch in the round.  I knit for a good three inches, cast off, and whipped out the measuring tape.

Here's how it breaks down:

My stitch gauge, measured over several spots on the swatch, averaged at 8.5 stitches per inch.

The row gauge averaged at 10.5 rounds per inch.

I'm knitting these mittens for my four year old.  His measurements are:

Wrist circumference: 4.75"
Hand circumference at base of thumb (the widest point of the mitten): 6.25"
Hand circumference above base of thumb: 5.25"
Wrist to tip of pinky finger (traditional spot for decreases to begin): 3.1"
Wrist to tip of middle finger: 4.1"
Thumb length: 1.75"

If I multiply each circumference measurement by 8.5, I'll have the minimum number of stitches I'll need to fit around each part of the hand.  I like to have a little wiggle room in mittens (and I'll need a little space for the lining, too), so I will add 1/2" to each circumference before doing the multiplication.  I also like to work with a set of five needles, so I'm going to round the numbers down or up whenever possible to have a multiple of 4 stitches to evenly divide across the needles.

End result:

Stitches to go around the wrist: 44
Stitches to around widest part of hand: 56
Stitches to go around the hand after dividing for the thumb: 48

The math for the length will only matter for the increases to the thumb and the decreases to the top of the hand - otherwise the number of rows doesn't need to be notated - you just knit to the desired length.  I'll deal with those numbers when I reach those sections.

We're almost ready to cast on!

B is for Before we Begin: the Basics

According to her autobiography, Laura Ingalls Wilder learned to knit when she was four years old, by watching her mother teach Mary, who was then six.

Learning to knit is easier than learning to read (two stitches versus twenty-six letters and thousands of words), and only slightly more difficult than learning to tie your shoes.  It takes only the patience, attention-span, and dexterity of an average six-year-old, or that of an especially observant and tenacious four-year-old.  It requires minimal equipment, it's extremely portable, and it can be done in the dark or by the blind, and it's very easy to fix mistakes.  Frustrating, but simple.

Victorian-era knitters tended to use finer yarns and smaller needles than we use today - there is no evidence that I've found of worsted-weight yarn being used for mittens, or really anything other than rugs, blankets, or heavy shawls.  There are patterns still available for mittens knit on the equivalent of US 00000 needles, using silk thread around the same thickness as sewing thread.  These are fancy mittens, of course, though they're probably warmer than you would expect - silk is an excellent insulator. For everyday mittens, meant to be worn by children for one or two seasons and then likely unraveled and reknit into larger mittens or something else, a plain wool yarn would be much more practical.  The yarn still wouldn't be any heavier than DK at most, though.  I've chosen to use a light sportweight yarn - Knit Picks Wool of the Andes Sport.  It's inexpensive, 100% wool, not too soft (scratchier yarns tend to be sturdier), but not too coarse, and I will be able to use the leftovers for other projects that I'm planning for the blog.  I haven't decided what I'll use for the knit lining, but it will be a fingering weight yarn.

The basic skills required for knitting basic mittens:

Casting on
Knitting
Purling
Working in the round
Increasing
Decreasing
Finishing off
Picking up stitches
Weaving in ends
Knitting a second mitten after you're already sick of the first

Tally-ho

A is for Ambitious

I started this blog with grand ambitions of doing a craft every month, maybe every week!  I would make photo tutorials and patterns and design everything myself and make everything from scratch and brew my own lye and learn to sew historically accurate Victorian walking gowns and build a log cabin in my backyard.  Then I took a step back and thought about it and decided that I could scale it back a bit, and just have fun with it.  I posted a few things, made some yarn dolls, and discovered that the Christmas chapter, with its two pairs of mittens and Charlotte, came a lot sooner than I recalled.  Then I got sick, and the boys came down with every malady small children can catch, and my husband had his driver's license suspended, and my dad died.  Somehow that made trying to design a simple children's mitten into the hardest task I could imagine.  I started and ripped back a dozen swatches and samples.  I toyed with the idea of just posting a list of links to suitable mitten patterns.  I toyed with the idea of just posting a picture of some mittens I had knitted for Silas for Christmas in the past.  I even toyed with the idea of plagiarizing someone else's pattern, with enough tweaks to make me feel somewhat better about it.  That would be in keeping with the pioneer spirit, right?

If there was one thing I had really wanted to do in this blog, though, it was to write my own patterns, or to work from actual historical patterns in the public domain, making my own adaptations and updates along the way.  I'm not looking to become the next Nancy Bush, but I wanted at least the knitting in this blog to be authentically mine, if not historically authentic.

So I continued swatching and ripping out until my yarn began to look very haggard indeed, and then I got an email reminding my that the April A-Z challenge was coming up.

"Ha," I thought to myself.  "Like that's going to happen."

I had been reasonably successful last year, on my other blog, managing about four posts a week on schedule and catching up the other two a day late or on Sundays, but I couldn't imagine trying to come up with all new ideas this year.  The thought of trying to do an A-Z list of Little House on the Prairie themes here was intriguing, but the thought of doing that much research and writing, with four family birthdays this month, a bridal shower, and, you know, two toddlers and a full-time job, quickly nixed the idea.  I couldn't even manage a list.

Somehow, though, the idea of doing an A-Z of designing and knitting a pair of mittens in a month crept in, and stuck.  I started drafting entries.  I started making concrete plans.  I started looking for links . . .

So that's my ambition for this year's April A-Z.  To bring you all along on my design process, haphazard as it is, and let you watch a pair of Little House in the Big Woods Christmas Mittens grow.
Welcome along!