How To Knit Handmade Mittens

Handmade Mittens make wonderful gifts for all the people in your family, especially children. If you are someone who loves to knit, knitting mittens for charitable donations is also a great way to keep yourself busy while doing something good for others. Follow these steps to learn how to knit mittens. This tutorial assumes you know the following techniques: cast on, bind off, knit, and three needle bind. If you are not familiar with these knitting tasks, then you should first learn these before attempting this mitten pattern.

To knit mittens, you will need the following items: the template of the hand you will be building the mittens for, double stitch needles, extra needles, yarn, extra yarn, and either stitch markers or paper clips.

Making the Pocket for the Fingers

1.Cast on your stitches by wrapping thread around two needles in a figure eight shape. You will determine the number of stitches to make by how pointed you want the final hand pocket to be.
2.Knit one row, placing a stitch marker at the end to mark it.
3.Knit a second row, adding four stitches and another marker.
4.Continue knitting rows, adding four more stitches on every other row as you go.
5.Measure against the template periodically.
6.Mark your last row with the stitch increase when you are ready to move on to the thumb, after achieving the right finger pocket width for the hand you are working on.
7.Knit straight, following the template, until you get the correct thumb webbing angle for the hand you are working on.

Making the Thumb

1.Move the finger pocket onto either stitch holders or additional needles.
2.Cast on your stitches by repeating step one from the finger pocket. You will want to cast on two stitches for the first row.
3.Knit a second row, adding two stitches as before, on every other row.
4.Continue adding rows and stitches until you've built the right size thumb as according to your template.
5.Move the thumb to stitch holders, and put the finger pocket back on to the needles.
6.Add the thumb to either the right or left of the mitten, depending on which hand you are working on.
7.Attach the thumb to the finger pocket of the mitten using four stitches.
8.Three needle bind the number of stitches you like after lining up the thumb and the finger pocket.
9.After finishing the attachment of the thumb, mark the start row,
10.Decrease a stitch each row to form the glove fit.

Making the Cuff

1.Continue knitting rows until the mitten's palm matches the palm on your template.
2.Knit two additional rows after reaching the base of the palm.
3.Knit in your ribbing until you have made a cuff sized as you like.
4.Bind off.
5.Weave in the ends.

Repeat these steps, attaching the thumb to the the opposite side, for the second mitten in the pair.