Friday, November 23, 2012

Felted Mittens

I am making some mittens for the Afghans for Afghans charity. I have an old book 'A Time to Knit Mittens' by Sandy Baas & Marty Godlowsk' that was published in 1985. I believe this in one of the books that I bought at a yard sale years ago. It has a great pattern for easy worsted mittens, as well as other yarn weights. I want to felt them & make 3-4 different sizes. I like making them with the gored thumb rather than the slot thumb because they are interchangeable then. 

 I made these in the men's size & then threw them into the washer for a complete cycle using hot water, then a cold rinse , & drying flat. I have four blue dryer balls that I bought from Walmart to use for felting smaller items, in the machine. I put them in with the mittens so they would have something to beat them up a little bit, & help them felt. I didn't want to felt them too much because I didn't want the ribbing to completely flatten out & lose it's elasticity. It did flatten out some but not so much that they won't stay on. The mittens felted down to 6" in the hand from 7.2" when I started. So, they were a men's medium & now are a child's medium. 

I have lots of felt that I thought I would try to make some cute designs with & hand stitch them to the mitten. We will see if I get up that much motivation!!

Felting in a front loader presents problems sometimes. The door locks so you can't take the item out & check without going through a whole turning off & on, spinning the selector on the washer, waiting for it to unlock, etc. So I don't bother with it. Size is not critical in mittens. There is always someone that they will fit. 



P.S. 
The fish died. 


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cool mittens!
Sorry about the fish. poor fish.

Tom Machine Knitting Guy said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Tom Machine Knitting Guy said...

Nice mittens. I agree about the front loaders although I can open mine as its an LG he so little water but, felting takes too much time so I avoid it.

Can you post the mens mitten pattern?

Sheryl Evans said...

The book that the pattern is in is called 'A Time to Knit Mittens' by Sandy Baas & Marty Godlowsk' that was published in 1985. I think this book is out of print, but there is another book by Eileen Montgomery that is called 'Socks & Mittens that Fit'. That is a great book too, & is available now. I'm not sure if I can post the pattern. It might be copywrited. I am going to post my summary of the men's pattern for you. I short row my mitten tops, so that explains the decreases. ;-)