The yardage given is for all five pairs of mitts.

I was able to get exactly 5 entrelac panels out of one skein of the Premier Yarns Serenity Garden yarn. (And I mean exactly. I had one yard left over from one skein, and two from the other. Good thing I only stole one yard from one of these skeins to finish the hemmed cuff of one of these socks.)

After completing the five entrelac panels from the first skein of Serenity Garden I had 5 beautiful panels… no two of which were anything close to being alike. Then I started knitting the panels from the second skein, knowing that I did not have enough yarn to make any kind of attempt to match the color striping of the first batch and resolved to making five pairs of fraternal mitts. Then a knitting miracle happened. Purely by chance, every single panel from the second skein of yarn exactly matched one from the first. I should go buy a lottery ticket.

I made a few modifications to the construction of these mitts. Rather than bind off the palm portion, seaming (leaving the hole for the thumb) and then picking up stitches for the thumb, I left the stitches live. I then picked up and knit the same number of stitches on the opposite side of the entrelac panel, worked one purl row and one knit row, and then grafted the two sets of live stitches with Kitchener stitch placing the thumb stitches on waste yarn. (I grafted 10 pairs of stitches at the top of the mitt, 6 at the bottom, and left 14 live stitches on each side in the middle for the thumb.) Then when working the thumb I placed those 28 stitches on my circular needle and picked up three more stitches at each end, decreasing those three to one at each end in the next round, for the total of 30 thumb stitches. This eliminates the seam on the palm side of the thumb. I felt the thumb was rather large, especially compared to the snug fit of the other fingers, so I decreased an additional 2 stitches twice several rows after the round of thumb decreases included in the pattern. I also picked up 2 additional stitches for the pinkie finger which I think gives a little more comfortable fit, and I added one more stitch to the ribbing section beginning and ending the ribbing with 2 knit stitches to make the seaming easier. (Can you still call it Mattress Stitch when one edge is entrelac? Half mattress stitch, half fudge-it-as-you-go? I don’t know.)

These mitts were made on a US size 3 circular needle and size 3 double points. I used a US size 4 to bind off, and used Jeny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-Off for the ribbing on several of the pairs, but not all. (I intended to, but a couple of times I forgot.)