The Homemade Nursery: Baby mittens (Another free knitting pattern!)

As you may remember from my post about my Nurture Hope quilt, I am quite fortunate to be pregnant.  My husband and I had been holding off on doing much in terms of preparation for the baby until we took holidays back in November.  Then we got started and have been plugging away every since.  I'm going to share individual projects we embarked on over the past few months, and then a final blog post with the big reveal of the whole room. 

After the success of the Baby hat, I decided to make matching mittens as well, since I had so much yarn left.  These took a lot more trial and error than the hat.  At first, I tried to follow an owl pattern I found on Pinterest, but that went terribly wrong.  There is nothing wrong with the pattern, I'm sure.  It was the choice of colour and yarn that just didn't work.  

That's supposed to be a tiny owl.  They can't all be winners.

So, new plan.  Figuring out a hat pattern went well, so why not a mitten pattern?  Again, it took a couple false starts to figure out how many stitches to cast on to achieve the desired size with this bulky of a yarn and larger needle size, but eventually I figured it out.  If you'd like to make a pair for yourself, here is the pattern! If you make the mittens, leave a comment or tag me on Instagram (@_LT_Smash), I'd love to see it!

Yarn: Bulky (5) Bamboospun in Dark Sky and Seablue. I used way less than a ball of each. 

Needles: Set of 4 double pointed size 10 needles

kfb: knit into front and back of the stitch
ssk: slip two stitches, then knit them together

Cast on 16 stitches using a stretchy cast on (I used the long tail cast on) in your stripe colour. 

Spread the stitches evenly over 3 needles (5, 5, and 6 stitches per needle) and join without twisting to knit in the round.  

Row 1-10: K1P1 across entire row (16 stitches on needles)

Row 11: Switch to main colour.  (kfb, K1, kfb, K2, kfb, K1, kfb) x2 (24 stitches on needles)

Row 12-26: Knit all stitches
Row 27: (K2tog, K10, ssk) x2 (20 stitches on needles)
Row 28: (K2tog, K9, ssk) x2 (16 stitches on needles)
Row 29: (K2tog, K16, ssk) x2 (12 stitches on needles)

Use Kitchener stitch to close off the end of the mittens. Weave in the tail, and any other yarn ends. Make two (obviously!)

Hats and mitts.... oh my!

I think these are really cute newborn mittens, and will hopefully keep our baby's little fingers nice and toasty in the first few (freezing) months of life.