Talk to the Mitten

These colorful mittens full of twists and braids are something fun for the more experienced knitter.
Worked in brioche they provide a warm extra thick fabric, for those cold winter nights. A column of three successive brioche knit stitches provides a visible and textural side edge to the ribbing based pattern. And to give the mittens a decent fit they have a thumb gusset slightly offset from the side of the mitten.

The idea for these mittens came about, when I was working on my yoga sock pattern ‘The art of Twists and Braids’ and people kept asking me, if it where mittens. :)
So I decided to make a mitten pattern as well.
It turned out the pattern on the tip gave the prototype a snake-, or reptile-like appearance when bending the fingers in a sock puppet like manner.
And with a silly joke toward my partner ‘Talk to the Mitten’ was born.

Gauge for brioche 1x1 ribbing in the round is 14 sts / 23 visible rows on 10cm (4in) after blocking.

The mittens are worked bottom up and use roughly two times 40g (1.41oz) of worsted weight, or light aran weight yarn.

You will need one set of 3,5 mm (US 4) knitting needles suitable for working in the round, at least one cable needle, scrap yarn and a darning needle.

Special techniques used in this pattern:
Italian Cast-On, Backward-Loop Cast-On, two colored brioche, Crossed stitches (a type of cable combination), knit/purl one below, a double increase and various directional double decreases.

Stand alone instructions with pictures are provided for the Italian Cast-On and the Crossed stitches.

The brioche, as well as the increases and decreases develop automatically, when following the general instructions according to the description in the abbreviations list.

Size specification for needles, hooks and yarn are included in both US and metric units.