The Level Up is an indie improv showcase. Join us as we watch amazing New York indie improv talents gain XP on the Magnet stage, unlock new achievements, and reach new milestones. Or do comedy.
Come support Michael as he dons his hosting-duties cap for three exciting indie teams!
I’ll be playing in with Michael and the rest of the Level Up!
Looking forward to it! And to seeing you there!! (Yes, you. Come on out!!!)
Saturday December 13th, 2025 @ 10:30pm
Magnet Theater
254 West 29th St (btwn 7th and 8th Ave.)
New York City, NY 10001
Tickets $10: https://magnettheater.com/show/tickets/60125
"Sooo cozy!" was the text accompanying this photo of Amy's hand with pearlescent nail polish and a woollen knit mitt.
"How nice," I thought, "to have made something functional and enjoyable. Now to make a new pair for me. I'll use this different sock yarn, that Amy bought me in Berlin, so we can easily tell them apart. This should be nice and straightforward!"
Ha ha ha! Ha-ha! Ha.
Readers to enjoy a tl;dr: this worked out fine, but not before multiple failures and some wrestling with broken self-confidence.
Palms up, blue and gray variegated mitts on my hands. My left pinky has a tell-tale Band-aid visible.Palms down view.
Body of the mitt is 55 stitches wide. Thumb is 4 stitches wider, using needles from 14L to 15R.
Knitting tension is T7 on both carriages. Near (but not at!) the loosest possible tension for my ribber carriage.
Manually loosen the yarn in the tension mast before knitting each row. The carriages screeched and often jammed, but I was able to jiggle them across with great anxiety about breaking my machine.
I really like how they turned out! I'm excited to put them to the test in the cold season!
Now, for the strong-willed reader, let's talk about some challenges!
Like most machine knitting projects, my issues can mostly be traced back to skipping the swatching step(s). This design relies on the stretchiness of two types of rib. The mitts "at rest" appear quite small, then stretch to snugly cover the hands. I'm not confident I would have been able to consistently measure gauge in a way that allowed comparing the stretched size of different yarns and tensions. But I should have tried!! I might have decided early on what I believe now, which is that this particular sock yarn is too thick to work well with my standard gauge machine.
Instead, I jumped right into a first attempt with extra stitches and rows, but holding everything else the same, including the tension. This was a miserable experience, with the carriages jamming constantly. The machine was basically telling me "no no no, stop, no" the whole time. Would that I had listened! I managed (through sweat and anxiety) to finish it, but the resulting fabric was uncomfortably thick and tight. The loop-through-loop bind-off at the top of the mitt was also still too tight to spread my fingers while wearing it.
For attempt number two, I decided to up the tension to T6, but otherwise go back to the original stitch and row counts. This went a little better in terms of process and the fabric, but it was still too tight to wear.
I got a lot of practice doing the hand sewing to make-up the pieces into the mitts. This was starting to feel like a lot of work for two disappointments. So I ended up taking a break for several days. I spent some of that time researching properly stretchy bind-offs and focusing on non-knitting projects, but mostly I was just feeling the sting of failure, haha.
Finally, I did some practice at looser tensions, doing a few rows at T7 and T8 to see if I could find a technique that would actually knit smoothly with this yarn. I couldn't! But I did found that T7 was the least likely to bind up. I finished the body of the mitt at T7 well enough. I decided to "do an easier version" of the bind-off, skipping the step of casting off onto waste yarn and stitching it up on the machine, freeing each stitch from the machine as I sewed it up.
The result was... fine? It looks very inconsistent when the mitt is at rest, but it's very nice and stretchy and, when stretched out on the hand, I think it looks OK. Hooray, mobility!
For the last mitt, I combined all my hard-earned knowledge so far, and did a proper waste yarn bind-off to finish the top ribbing. The added steps felt more time-consuming, but I think the sewing up went a lot faster. It certainly looks a lot better!
I'm not sure what I'll do with the failed mitts and the as-yet-unused portion of sock yarn. The machine definitely does not like it. Probably it should be used for someone else's hand knit or crochet project.
Thanks for reading! I have more knitting projects I'm looking forward to posting soon.
I took another (unsuccessful) run at the previously-failed neckline for the knitalong sweater this weekend. I have learned that I have much to learn about taking off ribbing with circular knitting but also I don't want to talk about it.
Instead let's talk about these!
My hands modeling fingerless gray mitts with blue and green color variations with 1x1 and English rib textures.The "palms-up" view of the same mitts.
I made these based on the Fingerless Mitt to Knit by Diana Sullivan (from Austin, TX). Diana doesn't give gauge or final measurements, or discuss blocking, so I made them almost exactly according to pattern.
Diana calls for superwash sock yarn, so I picked up a skein from Knitty City while I was out on some errands. I finally got to try out my fancy new yarn winder, which was pretty fun.
Yarn winder attached to countertop, ready to turn this skein into a cake.Caked yarn on the winder posed with the label for the yarn. Lang Yarns MixTapeSoxx Super Soxx color 4-ply superwash.The cake extracted from the winder, with the label stuffed into the center like I saw @KnitFactoryImpl do it.
Each mitt is knit in two parts:
The main body is knit from the wrist-up. 51 stitches set up for 1x1 rib (I used 53). Do 40 rows of the 1x1 rib. Then switch to English rib by setting the ribber carriage to tuck to the left and do another 40 rows. Back to 1x1 rib for 8 rows for the top of the mitt. Finally, transfer all stitches to the main bed, knit one row at the loosest tension, and do a loose loop-through-loop bind-off.
The thumb portion is knit as a triangle, starting from the tip of the thumb. 25 stitches in 1x1 rib for 4 rows. Switch to English rib and decrease by 1 stitch on each bed on each side (so, 4 stitches total). Repeat until you're down to 1 stitch, knit twice on that one needle, and you're done.
Body of the mitt, fresh off the machine.The little thumb cover!
I'm still pretty new to sewing-up knits, so I ended up doing the first one in stops-and-starts. It begins by attaching the thumb piece to one side of the body by lining up the tiny triangle end of the thumb to the first row of English rib on the body.
I did my best approximation of a mattress stitch here, making the mistake of trying to also "match up" the English rib sections of both pieces, even though the body had a lot more stitches of rib to work with.
In-progress sewing-up photo of the mitt. The thumb has been attached to one side. The thumb has been incorrectly sewn to the mitt all the way to the top, leaving no stitches to close around the thumb itself.
Thankfully it was easy to unravel my mistake. I made things a bit easier for myself on the second one. It paid to go slow and simply count stitches, stopping when I ran out of English rib stitches to sew from the thumb.
Second mitt ready to sew up. The transitions between 1x1 rib and English rib are marked with purple stitch markers.Second mitt in progress of being sewn up. The mitt has been sewn up the wrist side, joining the other side of the thumb. The last gap to close is from the top of the palm area to the top of the thumb.
With the thumb attached to one side, you then sew up the wrist, joining the other side to the thumb. Stitch markers helped me identify the 1x1 to English rib transition points.
To close it up, I ended up sewing from two directions - from the top of the palm towards the thumb crease, and from the top of the thumb towards the same. I ended up with all the long ends coming together in the thumb crease, which made a nice place to tie a couple of knots to secure them and snip the ends.
These were fun and fast to make, machine-wise. I have a lot of work to do to build my sewing-up skills and speed.
I was surprised to find that they even mostly fit my larger-than-Diana's hands! The ribbing is super stretchy. The only place they bind is at the top of the palm, where I probably did a too-tight bind-off.
Sunlit mitt on my right hand.
đź‘Ť
I've worn these around the house for a couple of days and could happily continue to do so. However, I want to try a slightly larger size, probably another 4 stitches wide and with another 8 rows of English rib for the body. I'm hoping that this pair fits producer Amy so they can get some good use!
