Several years ago I was lucky enough to spend several weeks in Japan with my husband, Aunt, Uncle and Cousin. We travelled around quite a bit seeing some of Honshu and Hokkaido, even going to the snow festival in Sapporo!
Japan is such a phenomenal place where the old and new cultures appear (to us anyway) to sit harmoniously alongside each other.
The people are so welcoming and polite and the food is amazing. If you ever get a chance to eat it, one of my favourite dishes is Omurice (Japanese/Western Fusion) rice, covered in a light fluffy omelette and surrounded by a curry gravy - it is sooo yummy)!
Sapporo had one of the most amazing craft stores, suffice to say that a large portion of my case was reserved for the goodies I bought there which meant posting some of my clothes home!!!
We spent only a little bit of time in stunning Kyoto, we have since been back and want to return again, but the short times we have had there so far have been amazing.
While wandering around on our first trip, we stopped into a little shop that had the most beautiful things made out of organic cotton. One of the things that I had to have was the woven cotton hand mitt, so it came home with me (with a few other bits and pieces!).
This was in early 2015 and recently it is starting to look a little bit worse for wear. So I decided that I should make myself a new one! Not being a weaver (although I could be easily tempted to give this a go) I decided that I would crochet myself one of these gorgeous mitts inspired by my Kyoto one.
So with my mitt, my trusty hook and some Red Heart 'Scrubby Smoothie' this is what I came up with!
The pattern is completed in the round, I use a stitch marker to mark the first stitch of each round.
Stitches used:
- magic ring,
- ch - chain
- dc - double crochet,
- hdc - half double crochet
- dc2tog - double crochet 2 together
Make a magic ring
- 6dc into the ring (6)
- 2dc into each stitch (12)
- 1dc, 2dc, 1dc, 2dc, 1dc, 2hdc, 1dc, 2dc, 1dc, 2dc, 1dc, 2hdc (18)
- 1dc in the next 2 stitches, 2dc in the next stitch, repeat (24)
- *1dc, 1dc, 1dc, 2dc, 1dc, 1dc, 1dc, 2dc, 1dc, 1dc, 1dc, 2hdc*, repeat from * to * once (30)
- *1dc in the next 4 stitches, 2dc in the next stitch*, repeat from * to * (36)
- *1dc in the next 5 stitches, 2dc in the next stitch*, repeat from * to * (42)
- *1dc in the next 6 stitches, 2dc in the next stitch*, repeat from * to * (48)
- *15dc, dc2tog* repeat from * to * once, 14dc (46)
- 1dc in every stitch (46)
- 14dc, 1hdc in the next 3st, 20dc, 3hdc, 6dc (46)
- *14dc, dc2tog* repeat from * to * once, 14dc (44)
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- 14dc, 1hdc in the next 3st, 18dc, 3hdc, 6dc (44)
- 1dc in every stitch around for the next 20 rounds (44)
- 42dc, ch20, skip one stitch and 1dc into the next stitch
- 1dc in every stitch until you get to the chain stitches of the previous round. 1dc into each chain.
- 1dc around until you get to the chain stitches of the previous two rounds and fasten off.
- Weave in ends and your Kyoto inspired hand mitt is ready for use!
The finished product is slightly larger than the original and has a little more 'give' in it, but I think that is probably a good thing, I can fit my entire hand into this one rather than just my fingers and half palm.
I hope you love it as much as I do
Andrea xxx