Mittens from the Top Down

I've been knitting this new series of mittens from the top down, based on the method outlined in Anna Zilboorg's book, Magnificent Mittens and Socks.  It's a little tricky at first to understand how the tip of the mitten is constructed, so I made a little video that shows the very beginning of the mitten. The first thing you do is you knit a tiny rectangle. This rectangle has four live stitches on two of its sides, attached to two of  your dpns. Once you've made it, then you use your other dpns to pick up three stitches on each of the other two sides. These three stitches grow to become the palm and back of the mitten.  (Next week I'll show how you cast on and knit the little starter rectangle.)



Here is the tip of the mitten with all the increases done.

You can see that as I increased the number of stitches on the palm and on the back, I started knitting the color pattern of the mitten from a chart in the book. It's a little fiddly, handling several colors in this little space, but it can be done, and it's great the way the pattern fits perfectly and symmetrically into the top of the mitten.