RE: Thumb Placement
Yarn Thrower (aka Laura) asked if I had any wisdom on helping with the fit of a peasant thumb; that is, a thumb worked without a gusset and placed on the palm of the hand.
I'm not sure I have wisdom, but here is what I did. I worked the thumb on 1/6 of the total number of stitches. If my total didn't divide equally by 6, I probably would have rounded up, rather than down. Since this is a 60 st mitten I set aside 10 stitches, placing the opening two stitches in from the side of the hand. This placement seemed to work, as I'm not getting any noticeable torquing of the mitten on my hand. I'm not sure if it would be wise to place it three stitches in with a finer yarn and only one with a thicker yarn. Haven't quite thought that through.
When I went to pick up stitches for the back of the thumb, I picked up one extra at each end, so I worked the thumb on a total of 22 stitches. One thumb fits fairly snugly. The other feels a bit loose. I obviously didn't maintain a consistent gauge : - (
But overall, both are comfortable enough.
One thing that will drive me crazy is wearing a mitten with a thumb that is too short (or glove fingers, too, for that matter). So I kind of overcompensate. If anything, the thumbs on these mittens are about two rounds too long. I just guesstimated by trying on as I worked the first thumb and making a note of how many rounds I had before starting the decreases.
The "gauntlet" style cuff happened because the grey yarn is thicker than the mottled red, and because I didn't work the ribbed part on fewer stitches or a smaller needle. I meant to do that... yeah... that's the ticket.
4 comments:
pretty mitt! And I totally agree about too-short thumbs - drives me mad!
You make a peasant thumb pretty much the same as I do - I like knowing other people think similar to me - makes me feel almost normal...
Fetchings(on Knitty.com) have a peasant thumb. I refer to that pattern if I want to make one.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts about this! I am really questioning my pattern, because I think it arrives at the thumb too soon, not allowing enough space for the heel of the hand... Does that make sense? I think I'll set it aside until I have thought about revisions... Hearing your thought process gives me "permission" to deviate from the written pattern...though it is daunting to me to mess with altering all of the patterning which is drawn out for every single stitch...
For the Heilo Mittens pattern, though there is a gusset of sorts, those stitches are not actually set aside for the thumb. The mittens start out with 56 stitches, and though increases occur on both sides of the thumb until 66 stitches, the rest of the hand is worked on those 66 stitches (with 11 stitches for the thumb worked on waste yarn before continuing on with the hand). Then, you go back and pick out the waste stitches and make the peasant thumb... Maybe I'll check out Ravelry and see what others say...
I used to knit the thumbs first, but found that they were always too short since it was too easy to fiddle with the mitt to make the thumb 'fit' when trying it on, LOL.
I always make gusset style thumbs, it just seems more logical to me. Lately, I've started adding more length between the cuff and starting the increases, and also adding short rows IN the gusset to give more length to it. The mitts are feeling great, no riding up of the cuff when I use my thumbs, no sliding up of the mitts, they seem more anchored on my hands.
However, I'm making some mitts on my knitting machine that uses the palm style thumb. I know much of the world does this style, LOL, so I hope it works out (from trying them on, I think the key is that they are much looser fitting than my regular mitts).
Your version of the mitts look GREAT!
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