My son is four years old. When I took up knitting he regarded it skeptically. Then he decided that my bamboo circulars could be used to good effect as tools to wire up his home-made “laptop” (some old routers, a mouse and an busted wireless antenna he scavenged from his daddy’s junk pile). A bit later I caught him sitting in a chair quietly twiddling his hands together in his lap with a strange motion (his hands were empty).

I asked him what he was doing. “I knittling” he calmly replied.

Recently I knitted him a small snake hand-puppet. When I attempted to put it on his hand he screamed, flailed and generally objected to the thing. It met with the same response for about a week and then I stuffed it with waste yarn, sewed up the opening and called it a “cat toy” which I gave to my best friend (who has cats).

He really has shown no interest in any of the items I have knitted.  Until now.

Over the weekend I made a pair of fingerless mitts as a Christmas gift. I would try them on and take them off as I went along and this process fascinated him. It is a fabulous and easy pattern for Magic Loop Fingerless Mitts from Myra Wood (that first link is only going to work if you have a Ravelry account*). When I had Grandma try them on for size it was the last straw. He couldn’t stand it anymore.

I asked him if he wanted me to make him a pair and for the very first time his response was Yes. Of course, now I had to come up with the pattern.

Big hands, little hands

Click here for a printable pdf of the pattern: MiniMeMagicLoopMitts

This pattern is a bit too much to put into the body of this post – so I got all high techy and stuff and made the above pdf. If you have any problem with it, please do not hesitate to leave a comment and I will figure something out for us.

Dinking around:

Originally I thought I was just going to make some modifications to the existing pattern. But it really doesn’t work like that. There is a matter of scale, and the fact that a child’s hand is of different proportions. The cross stitch motif in the original was much to bulky for the mini-mitt, so I cut it down to a 2/1 rib from a 3/2 rib. I also started the thumb gusset quicker than on the adult version, and obviously the thumb isn’t as long. Same for the body of the hand.

This pattern fits my small 4 year old. I would guess it would fit the 3 – 6 age range, but I recommend trying it out on your toddler as you go (you might have to resort to a cookie bribe, I did when the novelty wore off). You might need to add a row between the cuff and the beginning of the thumb gusset. And if your child’s fingers are longer you might need to add some rows before the final ribbing.

I seriously doubt that anyone would need to add an extra increase to the thumb gusset – those would have to be some pretty chubby thumbs! But if you need more length in the thumb part of the palm I would add a row between the 2nd and 3 set of increases.

I am going to put this up on Ravelry – so if you make a pair I would love to see what they look like.

Now, what other knitted item do you think I could pique my little man’s interest?

*If you don’t have a Ravelry account and you are a knitter/crocheter, well, I feel very sorry for you. 😉