My mother used to make us mittens with loops on the inside. They really were warm. If Mum knew how to make them and did make them, why should I not manage? Google, our all-knowing friend, first took me to the Drops website. So I started following that. I had nearly finished an entire mitten, but the whole time I felt that it was not right. I kept going anyway. Then… I could not stand it any longer, pulled out the needles and… unravelled the lot. I plunged into the depths of YouTube. Two tutorials caught my eye. I tried one of them, almost. But my loop formed between two stitches and was not held tightly. So presumably I was doing something wrong. Then I spotted an older lady called Sheila who was teaching the technique. I tried hers and, so far at least, it feels like the one for me.
I am using two strands of wool yarn together. I once bought some Aade yarn to knit Mattias a cardigan and it is so thin that… well, it is. The nice thing is that it is multicoloured with gradual colour changes, so the result is interesting.
It did not go smoothly at all. I finished the mitten and immediately realised something was wrong. It twisted sideways, so badly that by the time I decreased for the tip, the thumb had ended up on the back of the hand.
So I unravelled it and realised I could not make the loops that way. In short, when I made a loop I had been knitting two stitches together from the right at the front, but to stop it twisting I needed to decrease from the left. Confusing explanation? It is, but perhaps the video helps 🙂
Anyway, I got them finished. My first attempt, and I know they can certainly be better. Practice makes perfect.
This is how they turned out. The pattern is simply whatever the yarn colours happened to do, completely random. That is exactly how it should be, interesting in its own way, and that was my aim. The important thing is warm hands on a cold winter day 🙂