Procrastination Destination: Making Mittens For Your Secret Santa

I’m sure many of you participate in an annual Secret Santa. You get together a group of friends, draw names, and buy or make a gift for that person. This year I had the privilege to be invited to a Secret Santa, but the person I drew was not someone I was particularly close with. So I decided a handmade gift would be the way to go—so I didn’t have to worry about making something too personal, but it would still have a lot of my effort inside it. 

As I was thinking about what to make, I overheard my Secret Santa say they needed gloves for winter. So I decided the best thing to make would be a pair of crochet mittens.

Perhaps Pinterest set my ambitions too high…

Clearly I wasn’t thinking straight when I decided to make these, because I have never crocheted before… so I looked up what I thought would be the easiest flat pattern for mittens.

My tutorial-following skills are evidently quite low, because I somehow managed to exclude three rows from the mitten and it turned out wayyy too skinny (basically the worst mitten to ever exist). 

I mean… a mitten only a mother would love…

So I decided to restart with a different tutorial, this time looking for a 3D version (you crochet circularly instead of flatly) and I found this tutorial: 

This one proved much easier to follow except that I followed the tutorial without listening to any of the audio and simply copied what I (thought I) saw. My first mistake was in my crochet hook. I picked too big of a hook for the string and it was almost impossible to thread my hook through the yarn for the whole first half of the mitten.

My next mistake was not making the mitten long enough. My Secret Santa is quite slender and smaller than me, so I figured their hand would be smaller than mine. Just as I completed the mitten, I took a look at their hand, only to realize their hand was quite large! A huge travesty as I had made the mitten shorter than the tutorial said to accommodate for their supposedly small hand.

A very tight fit

The too small mitten

At last, I finished the mitten! With the gift exchange tomorrow, I’m not sure I'll be able to get the second mitten done in time. I guess the second one will be a post winter break gift for my Secret Santa…

Tada!