Welcome to this Arnall-Culliford Knitwear tutorial on setting up a thumb. This tutorial
supports the Trinket Mittens pattern by Mary Jane Mucklestone that's featured in MDK's
latest Field Guide Number 17: Lopi. There are lots of different ways to work a thumb.
The method used in the trinket mittens involves setting aside some stitches on a holder
and then using the backwards loop cast-on method to cast on stitches over that gap.
And you then continue to work in the round to create the rest of the hand.
Once you've finished the hand, you return to your stitches on a holder and you knit across them,
and you pick up and knit stitches around the other side of the thumb, which is picking up and knitting
them through the cast on edge. And from that point, you can then knit your tube to make your thumb.
This process is also very similar to the one that's used when you separate your sleeves off
when you work down a top-down sweater. The numbers of stitches involved are different but the basic
principle is exactly the same. And it could also be used for creating a pocket. If you imagine
pushing the stitches here that are our thumb through to the other side, that would also
make, obviously in different proportions, but that would make a good pocket opening as well.
So you can use this method in a number of different situations in your knitting.
You're going to start by working in pattern as directed until you reach the point where
you're going to place your thumb. Don't forget that this is your knitting pattern, so you
can try on your mitten if you're making it for yourself and just check that you're happy with
where the thumb placement is. It may be that it's a little bit too high or a bit too low.
You can easily take back a couple of rounds or add a couple more if you want a longer cuff.
Knitting patterns are a starting point, and it's great to be able to customise them as you like.
Having reached the point where you're ready to place your thumb, you're going to slip the next
six stitches in this case onto some waste yarn or a stitch holder. I quite like waste yarn because
it doesn't get in the way unnecessarily while i'm working the rest of my project.
But you can equally use one of those big safety pin type stitch holders, that's fine as well. I've
got my waste yarn on a tapestry needle and I'm literally just going to slip the stitches along
until they're all on the needle, and then pull the yarn through. And I'm going to tie the ends
together. I'm purposefully using a waste yarn that's a good contrast colour to my main yarn,
and it's also a smooth cotton so it's not going to felt to the Lopi yarn I'm using to knit the
mittens. Having set the stitches aside, the next job is to use the backwards loop method to cast on
replacement stitches, and the backwards loop method is exactly what it says on the tin, you're going
to put your finger over your yarn and you're going to twist it to make a loop or an e shape,
and you're then going to put that loop onto your needle and tighten it
up. So bring the yarn round to make the e shape and put the yarn onto the needle,
and you continue to do that until you've got the number of stitches you require, that's four,
five, six.
And that's going to add the stitches we need. Next job is to continue knitting, and
I'm going to show you how to work across those stitches because I know that the backwards loop
cast on can be slightly tricky to work the first row over.
So I've finished casting on, and I'm just going to continue now to knit across
the next stitches on my left needle, and you can see here is the hole ready for the thumb.
I'm now ready to work across the cast on stitches so here's the last stitch before the
thumb stitches, and the issue that can sometimes crop up with the backwards loop cast on is that
it's very easy to stretch it and pull, it so you end up with a long stretch of yarn. You see how
as I've moved my needle back there, we've got that long stretch of yarn kind of growing, and that can
quite easily kind of grow over time as you work along the stitches. So my top tip is just to keep
an eye on it, to make sure that you're not pulling the needles too far apart from each other.
Go slow and just watch out for it. There you go. I kind of keep them fairly loose, trying not
to, as I say it's really about not pulling your needle tips too far apart. And we've got to the
end there without any great difficulty. Those are our cast on stitches, and you can see the kind of
overlapping loops at the base there from the backwards loop cast on, and then that's the first
stitch that wasn't involved in the thumb. If you do struggle a bit with the backwards loop
cast on and find that you're getting that long kind of annoying gappy bit of yarn at the end,
one thing you can do is you can cast on one stitch fewer than you've been instructed to,
and then when you get that long stretch of yarn, when you come to work over them you can twist that
and create an extra stitch from it. So you, in doing so, snug up those stitches that you've worked and
that's just a handy way of dealing with that. But if you don't over pull your stitches as you work
across them then it's pretty straightforward to just cast on the number you need and knit across.
We've now completed knitting the rest of the hand of the mitten, so we're going to come back
and work the thumb, and the first job is to use a double pointed needle or if you're on
a circular needle you could use magic loop. But you are first of all going to
pick up all of the stitches that you left on the holder or on your waste yarn.
So we slide our stitches onto the double pointed needle
and then you can leave the the, um, waste yarn in if you're using waste yarn, but
probably a little easier to take it out. We're now going to knit across those stitches, and we're going
to leave a fair bit of tail so that we've got a tail to neaten up any gaps or anything that might
form at the corners. They shouldn't because we're going to pick up an extra stitch, but
if you've got a bit of a tail you can use it for that. So I'm just going to knit across my stitches.
I'm now going to use my next double pointed needle to pick up a stitch in the corner here, between the
stitches on hold and the cast on stitches, and I'm going to do that by sliding my needle tip
under both legs of that edge stitch there, wrap the yarn around and pull that loop
through. So that's my extra picked up stitch, and now I'm working across my cast on edge stitches,
and we should be able to see the looping edges of the backwards loop cast on.
And what I'm going to do is I'm just going to put the needle tip at the point at which
the strand goes behind and the next one comes in front.
So there's the strand behind, and there's the next one along, and I'm going to poke the needle in
through both of those at the point at which it crosses. To me that gives a really nice neat
neat edge if i do that in the same point each time. But honestly you can stab your
needle through and just pick up from that edge, but one of the ways that you get
neat and tidy knitting is to do it the same way each time. So there we go I've
picked up one, and then I'm going to find that next point where the stitches loop
and knit through that and here's my third one. It's just at that loop point.
Here's how it looks at the base there as I'm working across.
If you're working with the magic loop method, you'd obviously just keep going on the same needle tip.
Here, I'm using double pointed needles so I'm introducing a third in the middle of this cast-on
edge. I just held the other double pointed needle out of the way so that you can see what's going on,
but I'm literally just going into that same loop point each time, wrapping the yarn around, pulling
through. I'm going to tighten that one up, and I'll snug it up again after the next stitch because you
will find it probably just loosens off a bit after that first one. But once you've got a couple done,
it'll be fine. Let's tighten that up in there, and then the last stitch from the cast on edge is here,
and then once again, we're going to pick up one from the corner edge here,
and I'm going to go under both legs of this stitch on the edge, but again just pop your needle through
wherever you want in that gap bit and pull through a loop. I think if you go into the middle here,
it's just going to pull that hole a bit larger, so that's why i'm going under both legs,
there we go, under both legs, wrap the yarn around and pull the loop through. There we go.
And that's all of our stitches for the thumb picked up.
All we need to do now is work round and round on them until we've
made our thumb as long as we want, close it up and our mittens will be complete.
I do hope you found those tips on working the thumb of your Trinket Mittens helpful.
The Trinket Mittens are designed by Mary Jane Mucklestone, and the pattern is found in the
Modern Daily Knitting Field Guide Number 17: Lopi. If you've found this tutorial helpful. do head over
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