Mittens and Cowls and Scarves, Oh My!

With a hats and ear warmers too!

When the members of Grace's Shawl Ministry talked about hats and scarves for the homeless I thought, "Aha! That piece can be a scarf!" So I finally finished the piece of knitting that was my first real knitting project in almost 40 years. Because I misunderstood the pattern, I ended up with a ribbed piece. So I put it aside and started over. Now it's finished.

If I was going to make hats and scarves, shouldn't I make gloves or mittens, too?

When I was in elementary school Mom knit a pair of green mittens for me. I managed to keep them for several years, and for many of them, a piece of red yarn patched a hole in one of the thumbs. Well, I'm not ready to knit mittens yet, so I set about looking for a pattern for crocheted mittens. There are far fewer crochet patterns for mittens, but they are out there. I finally settled on this pattern from the Red Heart site.

Since I tend to crochet tightly I usually have to use a hook that's a size or two larger than the pattern calls for. I did a swatch with the suggested hook size for this pattern, and to my surprise, I came up with a swatch that matched the pattern gauge. "I must be getting better at the tension," I thought to myself. The next project proved me wrong. I haven't adjusted my tension, but I obviously found someone who crochets like I do!

This set is done using three skeins of Red Heart Super Saver Shaded Dusk. The mittens and the hat (the first pattern on this page) are done with an I size hook. I crocheted the scarf using a size K hook and a pattern of alternating three single crochet and three half-double crochet across each row. I like the wave pattern.

Winter set #2: Cowl, headband, and mittens. The mittens are the same mitten pattern, but a smaller size, using Caron's Simply Soft Chocolate. The headband is a simple pattern of rows of single crochet done in the back loop, which makes a ribbed piece with some stretch. It's Caron's Simply Soft Paints Sunset. The cowl uses both, with the Chocolate as the main color. I did it as a mobius strip, which intrigued the group this morning. I may be teaching a crochet class!

Winter set #3. Did I mention how quickly these work up? The mittens take me a couple of evenings, the hat another, and the scarf a couple. These are made using a single Caron One Pound for all four pieces.  I like this color (Cape Cod Blue) so much that I may make some mittens for myself using it! I used a size J hook for the mittens, because the adult men's mittens using the I hook were just a shade too small for my hands. I'm trying to make a variety of sizes for both men and women that we can take to shelters or have on hand if someone comes into the office looking for warm things.

I may be making more mittens and fewer hats, as other folks have been making hats. But I also like the cowls since they can be used as a scarf or a hood. We'll see.

So here's the green scarf again. It became part of Winter set #4 with the addition of a head band done in Red Heart Super Saver Artist Print and fingerless mitts in Caron Simply Soft Chocolate.

And here are the winter sets bundled up for delivery.

Now that I know I've done mittens, there are couple of slightly more complex patterns I'd like to try. And I haven't stopped working on prayer shawls. I have three going, one of which is almost finished. The other two, well, we'll see.