Broad Street Mittens

Snookums and his mittensBroad Street Mittens
As the Snook daily complains about how “frickin’ freezin'” it is in the mornings, I decided to knit him these Broad Street Mittens from Knitty to keep him warm. They’re basically fingerless gloves with mitten shells attached to the knuckles. There’s a loop at the top of the mitten that you slip over a button on the cuff to keep them from flapping around. Cool, huh? I used some of the Bendigo sock wool I got at the Craft Fair last month and they turned out pretty nice. It wasn’t nearly as hard to knit gloves as I thought it would be. I churned these out fairly quickly too, despite the small gauge. (I figure it was about 10 hours or so per hand.) Now to knit some for me!

Mitten shell pulled back     Mitten shell in place

As usual with Knitty patterns, I ran into a couple snags and at least one outright error. Read on for my (voluminous) knitting notes…First off, the pattern tells you that you’ll need two sizes of double-pointed needles but it doesn’t tell you when to use them. I assumed at first that the smaller size was for the cuff but I wanted to be sure before I spent half the day knitting something too small. In desperation I had the Snook read over the pattern to make sure I wasn’t missing anything and he noticed a tiny line indicating that you’re supposed to use the bigger ones on the mitten shell. Fine, but there’s still nothing that says which to use on the glove. Eventually I just went with the smaller (2.75mm) ones. Whatever.

Okay, so that’s when I hit the major problem with the pattern: sizing. I cast on 48 and as I proceeded through the ribbing I realized pretty quickly that this was never going to fit over the Snook’s hand. After ripping back a couple of times, I finally accepted that I was going to be winging this and settled on 60 stitches for the wrist cuff. (I was actually doing them on two circs, so I had 30 on each one.) Then I did a row of *K5 INC 1* to get me up to 72 for the hand. Okay, so far so good.

(Actually, there’s a mistake in the pattern at this point but I didn’t catch it since I was changing the numbers. If you follow the instructions and use 48 for the cuff, you’re supposed to do a row of *K3 INC 1* to get to 60 stitches. Except that math is totally wrong. If you increase every third stitch over 48, you get 64 stitches. Should’ve been *K4 INC 1*. I only discovered this tonight when working my own smaller glove which uses the numbers from the pattern.)

Okay, so everything else stayed the same through the thumb gusset increases and subsequent decreases. I still had 72 stitches on the needles though so I needed to change the width of the fingers. That number happens to divide nicely by four so I made each finger 18 stitches around (9 from the front, 9 from the back, plus whatever extra I had to pick up or cast on). I changed the length of the fingers slightly too. The pinky ended up 13 rounds, the ring finger 14 rounds, and the other two were 18 rounds. (I had the Snook doing constant fittings, so that’s how I came up with these numbers.) The thumb was worked according to the pattern with a couple rows added for length. That was it for the glove, other than weaving in the ends.

For the mitten shell, I increased the number of stitches to 72 overall (to match the palm of the hand). So that meant I cast on 36 for the ribbing flap. Oh, and I used the larger 3.25mm needles here. Then I picked up 36 across the knuckles and started going around. I was worried at first because no matter how tightly I tugged the working yarn at the DPN joins, it always looked like there were huge ladders and gaps there. It seemed to resolve itself the further I knitted, though. I did the 17 rounds as stated and prepared to start the decreases, but it didn’t look like the shell was going to be long enough. So I modified the decrease pattern slightly. I did the “K to the last two stitches, K2tog”, then knitted a round even. Then I repeated the “K to the last two stitches, K2tog”. Then I added two lines to the pattern: “K6, K2tog. K 5 rounds even.” Followed the pattern all the way down to the last “K2tog on each needle” and realized I still had too many stitches, so I repeated that line again. That left me with the required four stitches for the I-cord. Unfortunately I still think the mitten shell’s a little small. The Snook’s fingers are rather broad and the mitten is a little too pointy, I think. I tried to block it out and was moderately successful. I think it’ll stretch and mold to his hand as he wears them.

One last pattern weirdness: At the end of the directions it says “Stitch the edges of the ribbing flap down along the sides of the hand” but the accompanying photos don’t show this. I wasn’t sure whether to do it, because as it is the flap pulls back nicely and lays flat. If you sew the edges down to the sides, you get a funky stretched bit right there when you pull the shell back. Eventually I decided to try it with some scrap wool and see how it worked. The Snook said he didn’t mind the wonkiness and it seemed to offer a little more insulation, so that’s what we went with. I still think the author could have clarified a bit better.

10 Comments

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  1. Thanks for the detailed information! I’m about to knit these, and wanted to make sure I had good directions before I started

  2. Thank you so much for these notes. I’ve heard a bunch of chatter about the mistakes in the pattern, but not many people have published errata for the stinkin’ thing. And the creator of the pattern added nothing to the original pattern notes. Appreciate the hard work on your part!

  3. Can you tell me what size gloves he normally wears, I am about to knit these for my boyfriend and he normally wears a 2xl glove and want to make sure I’m making them large enough

  4. I really have no idea, Janet; I don’t think he’s ever bought gloves in his life. (You don’t wear them much in Australia.) I’d say that he doesn’t have exceptionally huge hands though.

  5. Thank you for the clarification. I am about to start this pattern, and am completely confused about the thumb gusset section.
    After making the thumb gusset increase, there should be 12 extra stitches on the 2nd needle. The instructions say to “place these added stitches… onto a holder”. This should leave 15 stitches on the second needle and 14 on the holder. But in the “thumb gusset decrease” section in rows 1, 3, 5, and 7, the instructions say to decrease the row starting with the 14th stitch every time. But how is that possible, if the second needle only has 15 stitches on it. For this to make sense, the extra stitches should not be placed on a holder, but remain on the 2nd needle. Am I wrong?
    Also, the “thumb gusset increase” section says to cast-on 11 stitches and knit “the last cast-on stitch together with the first stitch on the third needle.” Since the instructions say to knit only the LAST cast-on stitch, what do we do with the rest of the cast-on stitches? Leave them on the needle? This would mean that we have 5 needles and a holder holding stitches. If that is the case, then we’ve used up all of our 5 needles. So what do we use to knit with?
    Please forgive the newbie questions. Your help would be greatly appreciated.

  6. Hi Anya, unfortunately I knitted this pattern over six years ago and I can’t really remember. Are you on Ravelry? That would be the best place to get an answer to your question.

  7. Kris,
    Thank you so much for the ravelry.com recommendation! They have several posts dedicated just to this pattern, and have answered all my questions. The mittens are almost complete. I just have to finish the mitten shell.
    In case anyone else is interested, I found this post to be most helpful: http://www.ravelry.com/discuss/patterns/49010/1-25

  8. Hello
    This is really helpful. I am knitting my first pair of gloves with the Broad Street pattern. Can you give me a clue where/how to reverse the directions for the right hand glove please?
    Thanks
    Dawn

  9. Hi Dawn. Unfortunately not. As you can see from the date on this post, I knitted these gloves over six years ago. I suggest checking on Ravelry.

  10. I had no problem following the pattern. I made the man’s glove with the larger needle and woman’s glove with the smaller needle as stated. After completing the left hand glove with the palm on needles one and two, I followed the pattern exactly as written for the right hand glove where the palm of the hand is on needle three and four so all
    that is needed is the turn the glove over to the reverse side and begin working the appropriate fingers. I love the pattern, had no problems with it and now I think I’ll start knitting the gloves for homeless.

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