Simple mittens in English: Simplitate

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Romanian yarn that came to me via the Netherlands resulted in a mitten experiment, and an American knitter wanted to try the pattern. The friend who made the first connection lives in Latvia. It makes almost no sense to keep the pattern in Swedish only, does it? So here they are: the Simplitate mittens in English.

This is a first, so please let me know whether it works or not!

Big thanks to Ioana who provided the yarn and answered quite a few questions in an interview!

The Simplitate mittens

Needles: I used number 4 (European)

Yarn: a skein of Elena, Stela or Transylvanian Merino från Moeke Yarns (in Sweden you can order them from Matilda at Organic Knitters)

Cast on 50 stitches and knit 36 rows (more if you know that the recipient has broad hands or if you want them to be less streched-out while worn — the structure is very elastic, so guessing is usually fine).

Time for the thumb: knit 40 stitches.
Turn and knit 3. Lift the next stich with yarn in front, wrap the yarn around the stitch, put it back on left needle, turn and knit 3.
Turn and knit 5. Lift the next stich with yarn in front, wrap the yarn around the stitch, put it back on left needle, turn and knit 5.
Continue in this way with 7, 9, 11 and 13 stitches. Now you’ve knit more than half the thumb!

Continue in the same way but with 11, 9, 7, 5 and 3 stitches.

Now you have 40 stitches on your right needle and 10 on the left one — knit the 10 last ones, and then continue knitting on all 40 until the second half of the mitten is as wide (or long, depending on how you look at it ..) as the first one.

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Full rows until the second half of the mitten is as wide as the first one.

If you’re using circular needles with detachable tips: take off the tips, attach stops and decorate the mitten as you like! Then you can attach the tips again and knit the cast-on edge into the cast-off one. (Does that make sense?)

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If you do like I did and ask a friend to decorate: cast off, wait for the mitten to come back decorated, then sew.
Make the other mitten a perfect copy or decorate it differently (like my friend Åsa did).

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Done! Are they a gift for a dear friend? Something to sell as a small fundraiser for Medecins sans frontiers or UNHCR? Or maybe something to give to an organisation that needs some warmth to hand out, or straight to someone who looks cold?

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