This pattern is retired and not usually available. However, I make many of my retired patterns available for a few days twice a year, and this is one of those times! It will be available from now through some time on Monday, December 2. Then it will go away again.

In the summer of 2022, I realized that I found maintaining a back catalog of hundreds of patterns overwhelming. I couldn’t do it and still release new things. So I took my old patterns down so I could keep doing new work.

A few favorites have come back, and lots of new things have come out! But the vast majority of the old patterns are retired and are no longer generally available.

However, enough folks have asked about old favorites that I make many of the retired patterns available for a few days twice a year (usually in early summer and around Thanksgiving).

• If you see the buy buttons on this page, you’ve caught it on one of the days it’s available!
• If you don’t see the buy buttons on this page, then it’s not currently available.
• If you want to hear when the retired patterns are available, subscribe to the mailing list or patreon, or keep an eye on my instagram.

Portend verb to give an omen or anticipatory sign of

This is a companion to Presage (the hat in the picture at the bottom of this page).

As usual, the hat came first. But what can I say, I think accessories are more fun in sets. Actually, I secretly (not so secretly) believe that really delightful accessory sets are one of the very best things about being a knitter. So I made some mitts!

Now, mitts are not hats, and they need a slightly different approach. Wrists are, generally speaking, smaller than heads. So that lovely, big, graphic stitch pattern that looks amazing on a hat can be a tad overwhelming on a mitt. So I scaled the pattern down a bit and kept it confined to one dashing stripe down the back of your hand. And mitts need thumbs, and there are few things in this world as satisfying as a brioche thumb gusset, so I added a truly lovely one.

And the result is this delightful little treat. Make the whole set, or wear it all by itself. Either way, you’re going to have a delightful time and look absolutely adorable!

The mitt is written in three sizes (castons of 38, 42, or 46 stitches), and you should feel free to adjust your gauge a bit to fine tune the fit of the mitt. Just be sure that you’re working at a gauge that gives you a fabric you like with your chosen yarns!

I recommend working at something around 5, 5.5, 6, 6.5, or 7 stitches per inch, and I’ve included a table to help you figure out what gauge you’ll want to use for your size. With that range of sizes and gauges, the mitt will fit a hand or arm (measure the widest part you want the mitt to cover) between 6 and 10 inches (with lots of points in between).

Oh, and just to help you plan, I used about 125 yards of each yarn to make mitts for a large adult. If you’re making a larger or longer mitt (or if you use a skinnier yarn), you might want more like 150 yards of each. I was able to comfortably get a hat and matching mitts for a large adult from one skein of each of the yarns I used.

This is perfect for you if:

• You share my belief that really cute accessory sets are half the fun of knitting
• You are also strangely enamored of brioche thumb gussets

It’s not for you if:

• You don’t like charts (the pattern uses charts)
• You hate swatching (you need to swatch to check your needle size)
• You don’t already know how to brioche and you don’t want to learn (the pattern is not a brioche tutorial, but if you can knit, purl, slip, and yarn over, and you have just a teeny tiny bit of faith in yourself, you can totally do this)