Sometime in early November, I received another text from Kaylee. It was a screenshot of her email showing a class put on by THE BEST CRAFT/KNITTING SHOP IN THE STATE OF IOWA. She told me that she would like to know how to make these mittens.  I said, “okay, I will work on that.”  You probably could have guessed that Kaylee received these in the mail a few weeks ago with this pattern all written up for her. 

Now, I have to say, if you live in Iowa City, you should go to at least one class at Home Ec.  It’s pretty often that I wish I had a local store like Home Ec over here on the west coast where I could take a class and learn a new craft (I was never able to make it to their needle felting classes and I’m still so bummed). But if you know how to knit, purl, knit-in-the-round and already have other upper-level knitting skills, feel free to use this pattern to make yourself some darn cute mittens.

And if you have yet to learn these skills, come on over to my house in Washington or treat yourself to a class at your local yarn shop.

You’ll need:

• Yarn of your choice – I used something similar to this and this color is pretty close to 8019
• Set of US 4 DPN’s
• Set of US 6 DPN’s
• Darning Needle to weave in ends

Mitten:
Using the Size 4 needles, CO 40 st, join in the round
Rows 1 – 20: k2, p2 x 10
Row 21: Switching to size 6 needles, knit
Row 22: knit
Row 23: purl
Repeat rows 21 – 23 six more times
Row 42: k2, k6 back and forth with a different yarn for after-thought thumb, k38
Row 43: knit
Row 44: purl
Row 45: knit
Row 46: knit
Row 47: purl
Repeat rows 45 – 47 seven more times (you should have 16 purled rows)
Rows 68 – 71: knit
Row 72: k8, k2tog, repeat until end of row
Row 73: knit
Row 74: k7, k2tog, repeat until end of row
Row 75: knit
Row 76: k6, k2tog, repeat until end of row
Row 77: knit
Row 78: k5, k2tog, repeat until end of row
Row 79: knit
Row 80: k4, k2tog, repeat until end of row
Row 81: knit
Row 82: k3, k2tog, repeat until end of row
Row 83: k2, k2tog, repeat until end of row
Row 84: k1, k2tog, repeat until end of row
Finish last eight stitches by weaving end yarn back through to close the circle, weave in ends.

*For afterthought thumb set up, watch this video on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un5_pwKfuaI (video is also linked above)

Thumb:
Using the size 6 needles, pick up the 12 stitches from thumb set-up (6 in each little row) AND a total of 4 extra stitches, one on each side of the two rows of 6. You should have a total of 16 stitches.
Rows 1 – 16: knit
Row 17: k2, k2tog, repeat until end of row
Row 18: knit
Row 19: k1, k2tog, repeat until end of row
Row 20: knit
Row 21: k2tog, repeat until end of row
Finish last four stitches by weaving end yearn back through to close the circle, weave in ends.

Happy Knitting!