Kyla Fingerless Mittens

Art intersects function. These fun and artistic fingerless mittens are designed by the very talented Monika of Smoking Hot Needles. And it's a free pattern. How amazing is that!


This is a cool post for me because I'm talking about two things that I love. First I love how generous and amazing the knit blog community is. It never ceases to amaze me how knitters so freely give their advice and share their patterns. For me, it wasn't so much that I learned how to knit from reading the knit blogs but rather that I learned what could be knit, other than a frumpy old sweater and scarf. The knitting blogs were my gateway into a world filled with gossamer shawls, handpainted yarns, brightly colored socks, and fingerless mittens. After seeing the many beautiful things being knit in blogland I never thought about my own knitting the same way again. Speaking of which, you will certainly never find a finer example of all that is good about knit blogs than Monika's blog Smoking Hot Needles.

Topanga, California

I'm going to talk a little about Topanga, California which is my home and where I love to be. Often I talk about other places and simply forget to talk about Topanga. These pictures of me wearing my Kyla Mittens are taken in our garden which is styled after a botanical garden or, if you prefer, a yard with a few hardy plants that don't require much water or care. The little community of Topanga is actually a 15 minutes drive down the mountain from where we live. Technically, as the crow flies, we are in the Santa Monica Mountains above Malibu and are surrounded by native California Chaporral.

You can see the Pacific Palisades behind me and if it wasn't such a foggy day you would also see the city of Los Angeles beyond that. At night the city lights are dazzling.

I'm standing amidst a particularly hardy and well adapted plant, which is the New Zealand Tea Tree shrub. Both the pink and red sprays of flowers next to me are this type of plant. Given that California is facing a water shortage I highly recommend them to anyone looking to conserve water and yet still have colorful flowering plants around their home.

I wish I could also tell you what the white flowers is that I'm holding, but I don't know. If anyone knows, I would love to hear from you!

One thing that I love about Topanga is the quiet life we live. Except for those occasional coyote kills which are far from quiet, and the less said of that, the better. When people know where we live I'm often asked isn't it inconvenient? or What do you do if you run out of milk? The answers are yes and I don't. This is my home and I wouldn't trade living here for anything.

We start each morning with a short jog and that's lovely because it's peaceful in the mornings and I enjoy listening to the birds chirping happily around us. It's particularly nice in the Springtime because the mountain is covered with wildflowers and seeing all the pretty flowers somehow makes the jog feel less arduous.

Kyla Fingerless Mittens ~ Pattern Notes

But I digress and you want me to talk about the Kyla Fingerless Mittens! This is a great knit for the Spring because it uses a finer gauge yarn (sock weight) and that makes for a light and feminine accessory. I particularly like the wrist design because it creates a strong grip and these mittens will not easily stretch out or lose their shape.

I also learned a lot from this pattern. It is the first pattern written so that I understood how to add a motif of my own choosing. Monika has knit these mittens both with a heart and a cable motif and for mine I used a diamond shape motif created with bobbles (my bobbles are inside out but that's neither here nor there and I love them anyway, wonky though they are). It's so simple. All you have to do is decide what motif you want and then divide the total number of stitches for the top half of the mitten and then locate the center stitch so you can center the design. For example I knit these mittens on 48 stitches. That means the top half of the mitten has 24 stitches and the center stitch is the 12th stitch. To center a motif you simply have to center the design with the middle stitch placed on the 12th stitch. It's all clear as mud now, I'm sure. You can thank me later.

Knitting Tip #4 ~ Will you Have Enough Yarn?

With this pattern I also learned how to figure out if I would have enough yarn to finish my project, which is an issue that arises whenever you are knitting from a single skein of yarn. Since it can be disconcerting wondering whether you will have enough yarn to complete your project (particularly with socks that are a lot more time consuming) I highly recommend doing this. The simple solution is to pull out a food scale and weigh your yarn. If you know how much yarn your 1st mitten (or sock) used you will then know how much yarn it will take to make the second one. After I finished my first Kyla Mitten I weighed it and found that it used 20 grams of yarn. Since my skein of yarn had a total of 50 grams I knew then (hoped like the dickens) that I had plenty of yarn left to knit my second mitten. Despite my skepticism, this actually works perfectly. Both my mittens weigh exactly 20 grams and I have 10 grams of yarn left (20 x 2 =40 +10=50 grams = 1 skein koigu).

Particulars: Free Pattern: Kyla Fingerless Mittens (download pattern link) (ravelry pattern link); 1 skein Koigu Yarns merino wool handpainted sock yarn; US 2 Double Pointed Needles. More detailed pattern notes/modifications are on Mr Puffy's Ravelry notebook Page . The Dagoba Lavendar Blueberry Chocolate bar is nice but not essential to knitting this pattern.

Enjoy the Spring everyone! And try matching your chocolates to your knitting, just because it's fun!