How to Knit Mittens

Learning how to knit mittens is an excellent skill for anyone who has a family. They make great gifts and children, especially, love them! You can also knit them for charity since there's plenty of demand for them during the winter season. In this tutorial, I assume you know some basic techniques: three needle bind, knitting, bind off, and cast on. Before you start this how to knit mittens tutorial, I recommend brushing up on these basic techniques.

You'll need the following items: an accurately sized template of the hand for which you'll be making the mittens, extra needles, double stitch needles, yarn, and stitch markers/twist ties. Yes, stitch markers are more aesthetically pleasing, but if you are just a beginner, I recommend saving yourself unneeded expense until you are sure its a hobby that you really want to pursue.

First, we'll work on building the fingers pocket. Start by casting on your stitches on to two needles in a figure eight. How many stitches you cast on is dependent on how pointed you want the fingers pocket to be. Knit a row and place a stitch marker/twist tie at the end to mark it. Knit a 2nd row, only this time, add four stitches before adding another marker at the end. Add four stitches every other row. Now is a good time to compare the finger pocket with the hand template. Keep increasing stitches by four every other row until you get the desired width. Mark the final stitch increase with the stitch marker/twist tie when the pocket is at the correct width. Continue knitting straight, checking the template regularly, until you have the correct thumb webbing angle for the template.

Now we'll build the thumb. First, move the fingers pocket on to a spare needle. Now cast on two stitches each needle using the figure-eight cast-on technique. Keep increasing by two stitches every second row until the thumb is the width of the template. Put the fingers pocket back onto the needles and place the thumb part on a holder or spare needle. Next, depending on which hand the mitten you are designing the mitten for, join the thumb on one of the edges of the mitten. Use four stitches to join. Align the thumb and finger pockets and three-needle bind using a few stitches. After you finish your three-needle binds, mark the start of a row, and decrease a stitch after each row to form a gradual slope that forms a glove-like fit.

Finally, we need to make the cuff. To do this we keep knitting around the hand part of the mitten until we reach the palm of the template. Knit an extra two rows when you get to the base of the palm on your template. Knit ribbing into a cuff until it is the desired size and bind off. Weave the ends in and being your 2nd mitten!

And you are done! You now know how to knit mittens for your friends and family!