We needed matching mittens. Clearly. With a special one so that we could hold hands. And they needed to be warm enough for a blizzard, because, why not? So, I decided to make double thickness-stuffed-with-wool mittens. Using a skein of qiviut yarn my mum had given me. Because we need to keep those hands warm in that blizzard. Can you figure out which are mine and which are his?
I made up this mitten pattern as I went along, but the concept can be used with any standard mitten pattern. I started by knitting the outer mitten. I ended up doing the design in duplicate stitch, so I sewed that on after knitting the outer mitten. Then I knit an inner mitten, minus the cuff. I attached the two at the top of the fingers and thumb, then lightly wrapped the outer mitt in wool roving. My next step was to carefully pull the inside mitt over all the fluff without displacing it too much, and then I sewed the bottom edge of the interior mitten to the outside, right above the cuff. The final step is then to turn it all rightside out! The finishing detail was to make an additional mitten that we can hold hands in. Now we just need to go on some cold weather walks!
To turn a standard mitten pattern into wool stuffed mittens, all you need to do is knit the pattern straight, in at least one size too big. Then knit just the hand portion a second time (ideally in the correct size, though knitting it bigger won’t hurt), and follow the same steps I did to attach the full and partial mitten pairs (i.e. sew together finger and thumb tips, cover outer mitten in a layer of wool, pull the inside mitten over that, and sew in place).
As I said above, I used qiviut for the inside. The outer yarn was Titus from Baa Ram Ewe, and I’m really happy with the combination of a coarser longwool for the outside with a super soft interior. Plus I like the colors. I ran out of qiviut for the hand-holding glove, which is partly why it doesn’t have any decoration on it. I ended up using some Blue Sky Alpaca yarn for the interior of that mitten, which was a bit more tricky as the alpaca was sport weight, while the outside is fingering. Happily it doesn’t really matter if the inside mitten is a bit too big, since it’s on the inside and no one can tell if it is scrunched up or not!