Striped Thumbless Baby Mittens Knitting Pattern

After a few months of experimenting and testing, our newest knitting pattern has been released! It's a playful twist on our traditional thumbless mini mittens for babies. 

This striped version is knitted in the round with a lightweight 3 yarn. I chose K+C Smooth because it knits up so nicely for something this delicate. There's a wide variety of colorful and neutral options for creating many stripe combinations.

Since knitting in the round is actually a spiral, it can be tricky to keeps stripes looking even with a "step" in between rows. As always, Vogue Knitting: The Ultimate Knitting Book helped me figure out how to solve this tricky problem!  This pattern uses the jogless join technique to keep the striped rows even. 

Buy the pattern on Etsy

Shop finished striped mittens

8 Years and 900 Sales!

The year 2020 marked eight years of the Marion’s Mittens shop and we reached the milestone of 900 sales on Etsy. Even though it was a hard year to be apart from friends and family, I was still able to spend a little time with Marion to learn how to knit her socks. She checked in with me by phone every night for a week while I figured them out. More on that in another blog post!

Red mittens were far and away the most popular color of 2020. 

And my double moss cowl pattern was the most popular pattern in the shop. 

As always we got to work with some amazing customers who left such kind reviews of our shop. You can check them out here: 

https://www.etsy.com/shop/marionsmittens#reviews

We aren’t stopping here! We are working on restocking colors as well as an exciting new pattern release coming in early January. Be sure to sign up for our email list to get all the details. 

Visiting Battenkill Fibers on the Farm to Fiber Tour

We've been fortunate to have some beautiful fall days to spend outside. One weekend in October we visited the Battenkill Fibers Carding & Spinning Mill as part of the Farm to Fiber Tour. The owner of the mill gave us a tour and we explored a bit on our own as well!

This mill is special because each sheep (or alpaca) owner gets back their original fleeces. It's not a cooperative where what you get back might not be the same quality you sent in. Everything was carefully labeled and while it seemed a bit chaotic to us, the owner knew what everything was and where it was going!

Scroll through the photos below to see the process:

1. Fleeces ready to be worked on
2. Washed wool that is drying
3. Ready to be processed
4. Carding
5. Drafting
6. Spinning

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It was definitely an interesting look at where much of our local yarn comes from. And beyond, too! There were fleeces from Maine to the Midwest in for processing.