Broad Street Mittens

There's something nice about knitting and gifting for someone. When my boyfriend asked me to knit him a pair of "glittens", I was at first hesitant. Not because I didn't want to make them for him, but because my dpn skill was limited to that one pair of socks that I knitted. However, it's not every day that he specifically requests something, so I set off with the task of knitting his glittens for him.

Unfortunately, winter officially ends in two weeks, but he has managed to get some wear out of them when they were still in its "knucks" stage. Unfortunately for the glitten, his rough hands got the better of the soft merino wool and pilled it somewhat. But anyways, here is the finished object.

Project Details

Pattern: The pattern is Broad Street Mittens, by Janis Cortese and published in Knitty's Fall 2002 issue.l

Yarn: I used 1 ball of Heirloom Argyle in a dark chocolate brown, and 1 ball of Naturally Haven 4 ply in an Olive Green colour. Both are fingering weight yarn and both are a pleasure to knit with. The Argyle is a wool yarn, while the Haven is a merino yarn.

Needles: I used a set of 5 dpns in sizes US 2/2.75mm and US 3/3.25mm.

Comments and Modifications: I knitted the first glitten as per the pattern and found that it was way too big. After a quick search online, I also discovered others had the same problem, so I ended up increasing about 1/4 of the stitches called for.

The pattern is only written with one hand in mind, and asks that you reverse all shaping for the other side. Not that difficult really, but it'd be nice if they had given a pattern for both sides.

The only other modification I made was rather than picking up the stitches and knitting the shell, I knit the shell separately and then stitched it on. I did this more out of necessity, as my boyfriend lives 6 hours away and I had left the "knucks" with him so wasn't able to pick up stitches. I just cast on however many stitches the pattern asked to pick up and knitted it much the same.

All in all, I had a few annoying moments with this pattern and almost gave up and switched to using Magknit's pattern but the fact that I couldnt find the same colours in a different weight yarn made me stick with the Knitty version.

I personally don't think I'd knit this pattern again. It just wasn't fun.

My boyfriend on the other hand loves his mittens, and although they are a little worse for wear at the moment, it at least shows me he wears them!