Knitting Bumpy

Textures for Thickness

In the quest for warmer hands, a quick and easy solution is to thicken the fabric by knitting in a textured pattern, pulling up the fabric in ridges or small bumps, and thus distancing the skin from the weather.

But, while these patterns pull up the fabric either vertically or horizontally, they usually make it looser, because changing from knit to purl stitches leaves a little space. To compensate for this, most textured mittens are knitted quite tightly, on tiny needles. The tension—usually seven to nine stitches per inch, about the same as other mittens—belies the tiny needle size.

Some textured stitches provide elasticity and a gripping surface. They are often used for driving, riding, or golf gloves.

I’ve found mittens thickened with texture stitches everywhere—in a school lost & found, in shops, in books, and in a Christmas package from my Danish mother-in-law. One had a slipstitch design that made the fabric quite thick, but was terribly complicated to knit. My mother-in-law’s were straight mittens in garter stitch, stretchy and warm. In Vantar från När och Fjärran, one pair of child’s mittens had moss stitch, while a two-colored pair was in fisherman’s rib, a stretchy slipstitch rib.

The textured mitten given here is a Lithuanian mitten, found in a Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, museum store. Its all-over texture is really simple, and both visually and pragmatically effective. Read on.