Purple mohair mitts free knitting pattern.

The purple mohair mitts ( left)  were made from my own made up pattern which is detailed below if you want to make some. On the right are my latest version using double knit with the Aldi pattern I made before when I made the Anarchy mitts.

I made these to match my purple jumper and hood:

 

Mohair equates to chunky but I could not find any flat knitted patterns, only ones knitted in the round. I am going to attempt some in the round soon but I had to buy some double pointed needles because I did not have any in the right sizes. These have now arrived. Though I think maybe I prefer to do some sewing first because I have now got lots of knitwear and am missing my sewing.

One reason to make up my own pattern was that I also want to use the yarn I have and not have to buy more - and of course that also means these will match my purple jumper. I did not add the diamond cables like the jumper though. That was just too complicated when I have yet to work out even how many stitches I need for a basic pair although I did do these in a cabled rib which matches the ribbing on my jumper and hood, but I did not do any other fancy difficult stuff for this pair. They are just stocking stitch. I might see if I can do that another time but this is my starting point so I need to know how to get the right size etc. 

 

 

 I think these would work with a normal double rib as well but that may mean changing the number of stitches,  I will see on my next pair. I intend to make a few variants of these this winter and see what I am able to come up with. For me this is a real challenge to totally make a knitting pattern up from scratch so I think this project could be fun. I also will enjoy doing some smaller knitting projects I think rather than jumpers and now I have 8 jumpers, I really do not need any more at the moment so should just make what I do need as in gloves and hats.

Being 1980s mohair they are chunky weight so 5-6mm needles. I actually used a larger needle on the ribbing to the body of these which is not usual for knitting. 

 

These are my latest pair of mitts made using double knit with the Aldi pattern:

  I really liked my knitted mitts made using the Aldi  pattern. I have made two pairs of them now but they are double knit yarn and I currently have lots of bits of mohair from my various jumper projects so I decided to try and do something similar in mohair, but of course the needle size and therefore stitch numbers etc are all going to be different.

 

The wrists are the same twisted rib I used for the ribbing on the edges of the jumper and the whole of the hood is also this twisted rib pattern. I was a pain to knit and I wonder if its really any better appearance-wise that fishermans rib because the fluffy mohair does obscure the look of this. Still never mind its very thick and warm. And stretchy.

The thumb in the first glove is increased the wrong side so these are imperfect but it took me a while to work out exactly how to do the thumbs so I left the first one in order to work out the second then decided its not so bad so one is not really quite right but they will do for my prototype.

Anyway this is really my experiment but it worked so well I decided to share it.

 

 PATTERN

So here is my own pattern. I am excited to be sharing a knitting pattern with the world. 

I do hope this makes sense:

Using  5mm needles and double yarn ( to make it wear better) cast on 31 stitches. I used an aran type of cast on where row knit through both loops when making stitches to get a firm edge. I did the edge cast on in pink but the changed for the first row to purple.

Then for the rest of the pattern I used a single strand of yarn and knitted as follows:

Row = R

R1 (wrong side) using just one strand of the purple yarn : k1,* p2, k1 * repeat to end of row.

R2 ( right side): p1, *Cable 2 stitches, p1 * to end of row.

Repeat these rows for however long you want your ribbing on the wrist edge to be.

I did rows of stripes in purple, lilac and mauve ( for want of a better description of my purples) with just a narrow bit of the violet used for my jumper The thumb is in violet too because I only had a small scrap left over of that colour, but lots of the purples used for the jumper ribbing. Probably I had only eough violet to do one or two rows in a jumper so not even a quarter of a ball of yarn. It really was just a scrap of yarn. Using it carefully does mean the gloves will tone with the jumper.

Ok so once you have done enough ribbing: I knitted 9cm ( or 3.5 inches) including the doubled yarn edge in pink, I used 2 rows of lilac, 2 rows violet, 2 rows of purple alternating for the stripes) swap to 4mm needles because I wanted my main part very thick and warm and hard wearing. Normally you would use a smaller needle for the ribbing to the body but I decided to do it the other way round. The ribbing is smaller due to the cables so its not normal ribbing. Its up to you. Mohair in stocking stitch would usually be knitted on 5.5 to 7mm needles so I am knitting this up much thicker. Then I knitted straight in stripes up to my thumb. To get the stripes 6 rows lilac, 6 rows purple in stocking stitch for 11 cm( 4.25 inches). I made sure I had even stripes but you could ahve different thickness stripes depending on the yarn used.

To shape thumb; k8, then put 5 stitches onto a stitch holder, make 5 stitches and k to end of row. 

Continue in stocking stitch stripes leaving the 5 stitches alone on stitch holder for 3 stripes of lilac purple and lilac  with 6 rows in each stripe or measuring 3 inches or 8cm. So each stripe = 6 rows and measures about 1 inch or 2.75cm.

Then change back to 5mm needles and continue in the twisted rib pattern. I did this for about 3cm so just over 1 inch in violet. Then I used doubled pink yarn ( two strands together) to cast off. 

For the thumb I joined purple yarn and cast on 8 stitches and using stocking stitch knitted  4 rows then changed to violet and did  k1. p1 rib ( like the edge of my hood) I knitted 4 rows of rib then cast off. 

I sewed the thumb into place carefully to the hole in the body of the mitts, then sewed up the side seams. I did cast on in the wrong side of one mitt but when I  sewed up that did not matter. It just hardly shows though I will try not to do that next time and I will post my next version of this in steps so hopefully its easier to copy. I never knew I would have a success here or want to share it so did not do enough photos for a proper step by step description but any knitter can probably understand this pattern ( I hope). 

 

Feedback gratefully received on this because I would like to try to write a book on knitting gloves I think because having a problem with Raynauds means I always need them and its a very gratifying to make these completely, including sewing upm in just 3 days. First though I need to learn to write accurate and understandable knitting patterns so will be doing this on the blog as and when I manage to make them.  Hopefully if you do decide to knit some of these you can follow this but any problems do drop me an email and I will try to help you.

 So here they are showing the back: 

I am very very pleased with these. They are extremely warm and I think much better than the Aldi synthetic version in double knit. I do think the seam is much more noticable on these though, than it is on the ribbed pattern so I might have to do a ribbed mohair version next with this pattern as starting point.

 

Maybe the seams are less noticable when worn? I am not sure really.

 

 The dog is Hugh. He is a collie x GSD and 2 years old. He caused this sudden glove knitting due to having eaten my old hand knit gloves. They were about 6 years old but still better than all my shop bought ones. I was very upset with him and explaining I need them to walk him did not make any difference of course!

I am not leaving these anywhere where Hugh or his brother can find them.

And the "front"

And they are very warm and ideal for dog walking in winter.

Take care, stay safe and have a lovely weekend

Bracken