Mary Jane Mucklestone’s Trinket Mittens from Field Guide No. 17: Lopi are a brilliant little project for trying new things. It’s no secret that I love learning new techniques on a small project, and these mittens pack quite the techniques punch, without being overwhelming in the slightest.

Take Two

What is even better than working new techniques on a small project? Working new techniques on a small project that comes in pairs! You learn the new thing, and then a little while later you make the second one (provided you don’t get distracted by some other shiny new project), and that repetition really helps to bed-in your new skills.

Dealing with Ends

Trinket Mittens start at the cuffs with multiple motif choices to have fun with. Whether you go with a two-color or a multi-colored chart—or a combination—we’ve got a couple of video tutorials to help you with the color changes.

Either knit the ends in as you go:

or splice your new color to the old one:

On the Cuff

I combined Mary Jane’s Lanterns motif with a bit of Sparkle here:

Once your beautiful colorwork is complete, you need to change direction knitting in order to turn the hem into an upturned cuff.

To do that you turn your work inside out and knit back in the other direction. In order to avoid having a hole where the direction changes, Mary Jane uses a German short row. Sound complicated? It really isn’t, and I’ve made a video to show you just how easy it is:

Video notes: If you are watching on YouTube, you can hover over the time bar to see the different sections of the video, which is handy if there’s a particular thing you want to re-watch. The video also has subtitles which you can display by clicking on the CC button.

A Very Versatile Video

Once you’ve done your direction switcheroo, there’s a lovely section of straightforward knitting before it’s time to think about the thumb.

The skills you learn in setting up your Trinket Mittens thumb will set you up brilliantly for adding pockets to projects (like the Destination Pullover), as well as separating for the sleeves when you work a top-down garment.

Just one thumb can teach you so much!

Here’s a video about setting up the thumb, so that I can sit beside you and talk you through each step.

It covers setting aside stitches, the backwards-loop cast on, knitting over the backwards-loop cast on (without getting that annoying gappy strand of yarn), and finally, picking up your thumb stitches along the cast-on edge. Everything you need for thumb success!

With your thumb complete, you will soon be wearing your finished mittens–just as long as you don’t get distracted by a shiny new pattern, and forget to make the second mitten.

Happy Trinket Mittening!

Featured image by Jesse Wild Photography. All others by Arnall-Culliford Knitwear

This Could Come in Handy