Pattern Release: Vaunder Mitts

I'm sure this happens to a lot of you, but I find I get into certain ruts (for lack of a better word) in my knitting and that there are certain features or styles that I want to do over and over again over the course of several projects. Late last fall, I was in a twisted ribbing rut. First, there was a pair of socks with twisted ribbing and lace. Apparently that was not enough for me, because as we were on our way down to Florida, I cast on for a pair of fingerless mitts. They knit up in just a few days (and trust me when I tell you that I was most definitely not knitting all day long!) and came out exactly as I wanted. And now I get to share them with you.

Meet the Vaunder Mitts.

These were designed to be transitional pieces, when you need a little more warmth on your pulse points, or for layering, like when you might need to have some fingers free to dial your phone when you pull your hand out of a mitten but don't want to expose the entire hand to the frigid air. They're worked entirely in the round from the cuff up, and you can see they feature a lot of that twisted ribbing that was so obsessing me. A pair will take you between 150 and 215 yards of fingering weight yarn, so these are great if you have, say, half a skein of sock yarn leftover from something else or a 50 g skein that's not quite enough for socks. I used Fibernymph Dye Works Bounce (a superwash merino/nylon blend) that I picked up locally in the fall; incidentally, it looks like she's having a shop update this Friday, just in case you need to be enabled.

The Vaunder Mitts come in three sizes, to fit a hand circumference of 7 (8, 9) inches/18 (20.5, 23) cm. If you like longer mitts, it's really easy to lengthen them. The thumb gusset directions are both written and charted, and while I used a semisolid yarn for my sample, I think they'd look very cool in a variegated or self-striping. One of my testers actually used a yarn with long color repeats, and her mitts look smashing.

I really enjoyed knitting these up and have needed them the past couple of weeks when it's been freezing in my office. Of course, I'm hoping I won't need these much longer, but I think I might knit up some extra pairs to give as gifts later this year!