Christmas knitting

Merry Christmas to everyone!  I hope you are having a peaceful one!

My Christmas knitting!

LOL my only Christmas knitting!  I got a wild hair at midnight on the 23rd after watching Hubby rubbing his hands because his gout was bothering him.  His hands were cold. Cold makes gout pain worse so I asked him if he would like a pair of fingerless mitts to wear while he is working on the computer and watching TV.  He was agreeable so I went to work.

The pattern is Men's Fingerless Mitts by Kathy North at piece-by-piece.net  As you can see these mitts are not exactly per the pattern for a couple of reasons.  For one thing the pattern says to knit stockinette until it is three inches above the cuff.  My best guess based on the photograph from the pattern is she meant three inches from the thumb opening.  Three inches from the cuff puts the beginning of  the ribbing at the top of the knuckle for the index finger on the hand.  One inch of ribbing would put the end of the mitt at the first knuckle.  We wanted the mitt to end just after the second knuckle on the middle finger.  I added three inches of 2x2 ribbing to tighten the opening up to keep the warmth in and make the length we wanted.  The next change was to lengthen the thumb so it covered the knuckle down to where the nail bed begins.

I didn't do a swatch. (I know baaaddd knitter!)  So when I had the stockinette part about half-knitted I got my stitch gage out and sure enough, I'm getting 4.5 stitches per inch instead of 5.  Doing some quick calculations said I had 4.5 stitches to many, with that I decreased 4 stitches spaced evenly around the mitts to tighten them up a little.  When I got to the thumb the pattern calls for 20 stitches with a decrease to 16 but I only needed 13.5 stitches to get the 3 inches of circumference for Hubby's thumb.  I did two decreasing rounds of three stitches each to bring the thumb down to size.  2x2 ribbing wasn't going to work so I went with 1x1 ribbing until I had the thumb long enough which in his case was two inches long from where I picked up the stitches for the thumb.

I used worsted-weight Red Heart Heathers in Cocoa on US# 6 circular needles.  I started to do these mitts on two circulars and here.   My initial reaction is what a pain trying to keep track of all those needles and all that yarn.  I transferred everything to a 47-inch circular and used the Magic Loop.

Ah! I hear the timer for the au gratin potatoes for our Christmas dinner.
Once again I hope everyone is having a Merry Christmas!

Judy