My first free form mittens

I found some great pink chunky yarn in my stash. Yes, I was organizing the space and there it was...bright pink yarn begging to be knit.

After working on my Latvian mittens with its teeny tiny stitches, it seemed like a nice diversion to work with chunky yarn.

So, using my knowledge of the Latvian mitten pattern I started to knit.

And here is what I created.

Things I learned:

1.  Make the cuff long enough to cover your wrist.

2.  Make a division between the cuff and the big part of the mitten to keep the warmth in, and make it a more comfortable fit.

3.  When starting the thumb, wrap the stitches on the sides so that a hole is avoided.  See the picture above. In the top mitten I did not wrap (twist) the stitches and you can see a small "hole" where the thumb comes out from the mitten. On the bottom mitten I wrapped the stitches before knitting up the thumb.