sm's simple finger-free mitts
sarah-marie belcastro July 24, 2010 Last year I took an intercollege bus a few times each week, and had to stand at the side of the road waiting for it to arrive. My previous fingerless mitts were short and left a gap between my wrist and my coat sleeve when I knit. Thus, I needed a new pair of mitts. But I wanted them to be simple, yet interesting, and despite the many many many mitts patterns out there, none of them were quite what I wanted. So I experimented, and this is the result.
Materials
2 oz. or 110 yds. of worsted-weight yarn. [I used a one-off skein by the Kangaroo Dyer (obtained at a WEBS tent sale, natch).] Size 6 needle(s); one set of dpns, one long circular for use with magic loop, or one $11^{\circ}$ circular. One (locking) stitch marker.
About 5 st./in. in stockinette or 8 st./in. in $1\times1$ rib, and about 7 rows/in
Instructions
Please be aware that the written instructions will appear to mirror the chart for right-handed knitters and match for lefthanded knitters. Right-handed knitters should choose one or the other style of instructions, or read the chart backwards. Cast on 40 stitches and join to work in the round. Place marker. Knit $1\times1$ rib for 10 rounds. Repeat (kpkp kpTp kppp) for 15 rounds. See chart for a visual representation of this pattern; the underlying repeat is shown in the lower-left quadrant. Split for the thumb opening: work fat (back and forth) in pattern for 12 rows. See chart for the start and end of the first 6 of these rows. Join to work in the round and repeat (kpkp kpTp kppp) for 15 rounds. Bind off using Jeny's Super-Stretchy Bind Off.
Math?
There is a tiny bit of mathematics involved in this pattern. There are 40 stitches in each round, and the pattern repeat is 12 stitches. Therefore a round starts with the beginning of the pattern repeat every $L C M(12,40)=120$ stitches, or 3 rounds. My desire was to have a pattern repeat that did not change from round to round so I could just memorize a small chunk and keepgoing. sarah-marie is a free-range mathematician who almost compulsively generates knitting patterns. Sometimes she writes them down. Sometimes she actually knits them. You can learn more about her at http://www.toroidalsnark.net.
