Mitten ER

#1

Oh boy. I don’t know what I’m doing, do I?

Today I am almost finished with my second mitten. I’m using a generic pattern that has you knit in scrap yarn at the thumb line, then you take the scrap yarn out later and pick up the stitches for the thumb.

Every thing went well with the first mitten. But for the second one, I blew right past the place where I should have knit in the scrap yarn and realized it an inch later. ‘Oh well,’ I thought. I can come back later and take it out anyhow, I’ll just have to be careful. So I continued knitting. :knitting:

Now I need to make that pesky thumb. I figured out which row I need to take out and which stitches, marked them and (oy ve!) cut the yarn (it’s stranded so I have two colors to deal with as well).

It’s not coming out as easily as I had expected it to. Actually, once I cut the yarn I froze up-oh no, I just CUT MY KNITTING! Worse, I don’t know what I’m doing!

I figured that somebody on here has the experience, wisdom, and kind heart to give me a pointer or two before I ruin the whole mitten.

Please?

#2

I just knitted my first mittens also and had to preform some sort of surgery also.

Here is what I would do. I would take a tapestry needle and keep all my live stitches safe by threading in some yarn. When cutting the yarn I would cut out only one stitch and pull the yarn out one stitch at a time so that it will leave a tail I can later weave in and hide. Then I would place the live stitches onto a dp needle. Do the same with the bottom stitches. Then I would follow the instructions on making the thumb, hopefully you will get the same numbers of stitches needed if not you can always add more (M1) or decrease. Don’t forget you need at least one stitch on each side of thumb that needs to be picked-up. Did I make any sense?

#3

Ah ha, I think that’s the piece of advice I needed.

Fingers crossed!