lining the very warmest mittens

Today's work in progress post is going to be a bit different than usual. Yesterday I picked up the stitches for the inner layer of my second Warmest Mitten, so I thought I'd show you a little how to.

First, make sure your assistant is standing at the ready.  Just kidding, this is so easy!  You don't need an assistant.  Little Dog just doesn't make it on to the blog very often, so I wanted to show you what she does while I'm working at my desk.  She can't even comprehend what's up there that could be more important than her.

The real first step is to make sure all your yarn ends from the outer layer are woven in.  They'll be trapped between the lining and outer layer with no way to access them if you don't weave them in now!

Next you'll want to find were to begin your row.  The red arrow is pointing to the original first stitch.  You do NOT want to start your lining with this stitch!  Since the outer layer is inside out right now you'll be working in the opposite direction.  You'll pick up your first lining stitch (green arrow) two stitches to the right of the original first stitch.  This way the center stitches of the thumb gussets will be lined up.  Puzzling out where to pick up the first lining stitch is probably the hardest part of knitting a lining into a mitten!

I found it pretty impossible to pick up stitches with my knitting needle, so a small crochet hook is useful for pulling yarn loops through to create new stitches.  Here we are poised to pick up the very first stitch!

And here we've picked up a few.  You'll want to continue picking up stitches all the way around until you have the same number that you started with on the outer layer.  For these mittens I picked up 36 stitches.

Just as a note, the outer layer of these mittens were knit with a US4 for the ribbing and a US5 for the hand.  I used the US4 again to pick up my stitches.  When I started the actual knitting for the lining I switched to a US3 to insure a nice, snug fit.  The original mitten came out far too large for my hand, which is why I wanted to knit them a lining.  You may not need such a drastic difference between the size needles you use for your outer and lining layers.

All the stitches have been picked up at this point and the mitten looks a bit like a dangerous weapon!  So we...

Tuck the outer layer back through the cuff, out of the way and...

Knit a second mitten inside the first!  I had to fudge a little and add a couple more rounds for length after the gusset shaping was done, then again for length in the hand.  This really does create the warmest mitten!