One Skein Made My Favorite Mittens!
I love convertible mittens… they’re great for warmer days as just hand-warmers, and you can flip them closed on those colder days while not totally committing to an inability to use your fingers for things like tapping away at your phone. The versatility they provide is awesome, and I also think it’s great that they really don’t take much more effort than a typical pair of mittens to create.
Last year, I wore through the thumb on my then-favorite pair (which I plan to mend but haven’t gotten around to). When I was thinking about making another pair of convertible mittens (rather than immediately patching the worn out pair of mittens knit in bulky weight yarn… because why not just make more, right?!), I realized I had a skein of Peace Fleece that I was dying to try. Peace Fleece is a worsted weight yarn that is a blend of wool and mohair and I couldn’t wait to see how it knit up. So I set out on a search for a set of convertible mittens that would work well with this yarn.
Because I am just generally difficult (…just being honest here) , I couldn’t find a convertible pattern in worsted weight that I wanted to knit at the time. I wanted something that would work as a great “basic” but that also had that convertible top with no other patterning or special techniques because, at the time, I wasn’t in the mood for knitting anything too involved. After searching for a while, I realized that I had all the knowledge and skills I needed to take a plain mitten pattern and convert it into a convertible mitten.
So, I settled on making The World’s Simplest Mittens by Tin Can Knits and decided to make some rather simple modifications to add a convertible top. See below for the modifications you can make to that free pattern to make your own convertible World’s Simplest Mittens.
My Modifications
1. After placing the thumb stitches on waste yarn I continued with the pattern until I was about 1 inch below where I wanted the body portion of the mitts to end. I then switched to 1x1 ribbing.
2. I knit in 1x1 ribbing for about an inch and bound off.
3. 3 rows below the beginning of the ribbing, I picked up half the total number of stitches (using the number AFTER I placed the thumb stitches on waste yarn) on the back of the mitten (making sure I picked them up on the right side of the mitten depending on which hand the mitten was for).
4. I then cast on the other half of the stitches using the backwards loop cast on.
5. Being careful not to twist, I joined to work in the round and continued knitting in 1x1 ribbing until the ribbing reached just to the top of the bound off body portion of the mittens.
6. Then, I began knitting in stockinette and continued with the pattern as written to complete the mitten.
Yarn Suggestions
Find links below to some yarn choices that I think would make AMAZING mittens!
Peace Fleece (what I used for my mittens)
Wool of the Andes Worsted (affiliate link)
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