He didn’t want mittens, but wanted all of the difficult bits of a mitten that would force me to learn a lot about crochet.
I haven’t been crocheting for very long. I can make rectangles, circles, all the basic stiches and some scallops. Baubles, I can do. I don’t like counting. Attempting a somewhat molded-to-fit mitten would be my most fiddly “pattern” to date, and required the actual watching of some youtube instructions, and then modifying them for big man-hands.
I also don’t know very much about yarn. An excursion last month to the New England Fiber festival tagging along with some experienced fiber-artist-friends yielded an expansion in knowledge but also showed me how much I don’t know about yarn. What I can tell you here is that I’m working in 100% Merino wool, size 3 (which happens to be two different sizes in two different brands, whoops). I used a 5mm crochet hook because someone told me to, not for any reason of my own making.
The white cuffs were pretty easy. A rectangle in half-double crochet (American) turned on its side. Then I had to work 150% the number of stitches into the side in blue in order to start the wrist. Not easy to space out when not working into real stitches but the side of a stitch.
After working up the blue and leaving a hole for the thumb (shaped with taller stitches an everything), I had to work the thumb with decreases which I had almost no prior experience with. Not as bad as I thought it would be. I changed the texture at the top fold-over bit by changing direction of the single-crochet. It gives a soft-cuff appearance and when folded over, all the stitches match. I really appreciate single-crochet for it’s beauty, simplicity, and how much you can do with such an easy stitch. Am I clinging to single crochet to avoid learning more complicated stitches? Why would you say that?
