Mitten Garland Advent Calendar – Mitten #1

Because doing Iron Craft and the Advent Calendar Project isn’t enough, I’ve decided to start knitting and designing a Mitten Garland Advent Calendar. I’m sure you have seen some of the cute mitten advent calendars/garlands out there in stores or on Ravelry and Pinterest. I suddenly woke up one day with a bug to make my own.

Here is how it is going to work. Every Monday through November 23rd, I will post a chart for a new mitten. All the mittens will use the same written pattern (which you can download below), but have a different chart. It took me about 5/6 hours to knit the first mitten (this includes time I spend ripping out and redesigning to get it right), so it should be easy to get one done a week. This is a nice small take-along project for vacations, picnics and sporting events. If a few people decided they want to knit along, I’ll set up a KAL on Ravelry to share pictures and such. (Update: there has been some interested, so please join our group and chat on Ravelry if you are knitting along.)

And we start with Mitten #1

Download the Mitten Advent Calendar Pattern and Advent Calendar Mitten 1 Chart.

The mittens are small, 4.5″ tall and 2.25″ wide (not including the thumb), but still big enough to fit a small present. What can fit in them? Things like a mini chocolate bar, a Lego minifig, a pack of gum, a small Christmas ornament, lip balm, a small candy cane, diamond jewelry…..

Some basics about the mittens:

Gauge: While it is not super important with these mittens because they don’t need to fit anyone. My gauge was 10 stitches and 12 rows per inch. If your gauge is different your mittens will end up a different size.

Yarn: Fingering weight. I am using Knit Picks Palette in Pimento, White and Finnley Heather for all of my mittens. You can stick to three colors like I am or mix it up and make your mittens all different colors. Because they don’t use a ton of yarn, it would be a good project to use up leftovers, it used just about 6grams/30 yards on mitten #1. Each mitten chart will tell you how much yarn I used for that mitten. I think it total you will need about 720 yards of yarn to complete all 24 mittens.

Needles: I used four size 1 double-pointed needles to get my gauge.

Notions: Tapestry needle, scrap yarn, scissors

Design: Other than being exactly the same shape all the mittens will have two design elements in common. First, they will all have a Latvian braid at the cuff. This keeps the cuff from rolling and I like the look. Second, they will have the day number on the cuff. I will do the design, so you can leave the number off if you wish and just repeat the cuff design from the opposite side.

I’d love to hear if anyone is going to take on this challenge with me! Look for Mitten #2 next Monday.