A Gift to the Technopeasants

In the absence of high-quality science fiction, I'm offering a knitting pattern to my fellow pixel-stained wretches. I'd thought about submitting this to one of the online magazines (probably The Anticraft, as this is not your usual happy flowers mitten) but I'd hit a snag in actually knitting these -- not a flaw in the pattern I hasten to assure you, but a flaw in my execution. I knit fair isle-type patterns inside out (i.e., purling all around the round and carrying the floats on the outside) and neglected to flip the pattern. Didn't matter too much for the cuff, but it does make a difference with the lettering. I haven't had the heart to pick (or rip) out what I've done so far, so they're languishing until I can do that.


(click through to Flickr to get a larger version).

These are Swedish-style mittens designed to be knit in 2 colours of fingering weight wool on 2.75 mm (US 3) doublepoints and should fit a small/medium woman's hand. If you need bigger mittens, consider sizing up to dk or sportweight wool and correspondingly larger needles.

I planned to knit these with a picot hem, which you work thusly:

Cast on 72 stitches in your main colour (MC) loosely. Knit 5 rounds. Next round: k2tog, yo all the way around. Knit 5 more rounds. On the last round, pick up the cast on stitches and knit together with the live stitches as you work around (be careful which way you fold the hem as you do this).

After that, commence the cuff chart. The plain striped portion of the cuff can be knit as ribbing if desired. The red lines mark the divisions between parts of the mitten (front/back, cuff, ribbing, hand); the red squares indicate where to knit in waste yarn for an afterthought thumb. (The chart is for the right hand mitten; if you would like a mitten for your left hand, move the thumb opening to the other side of the palm). A thumb chart is on the right of the pattern, under the Carpe Diem chart.

My charting software is meant for cross stitch rather than knitting, so it's not letting me put symbols in to show where the decreases should go (something I should fix if I'm to call this truly professional quality). Reading right to left across the chart, they should go k1 (black), ssk (black), [k across according to chart], k2tog (black) k1 (black). (The similar Generic Norwegian Mitten at Hello Yarn may help you see what I mean).

Explanations of ssk and k2tog can be found at KnittingHelp.com.