Knitting for a thumb

Eventually in your knitting career you will have to tackle the issue of the human thumb. I would hazard a guess that non-knitters spend approximately zero time thinking about the thumb, and where it is placed on the hand. Not to sound like a stoner, but have you ever really looked at your hand? Your thumb is basically stuck right in the middle of your hand, it slants all the way to your wrist, and it's not stuck right on the side like you might expect. No, the human thumb is offset a little bit towards the palm.

All of these factors have to be taken into consideration when making knits for hands, whether it be a pair of mittens, gloves, or fingerless mitts.

The easiest thing to do is make a pair of fingerless mitts with just a hole for the thumb. If the mitts have just a basic pattern (either stockinette or an all-over 2x2 ribbing) you can place the hole pretty much wherever you want and it will come out fine.

But be warned, if you want to make mitts with a design, the thumb hole needs to be set towards the palm. Otherwise you risk pulling the pattern out of alignment. I had this happen on a pair of fingerless mitts that I designed with a cable on the back of the hand. I didn't allow for proper placement of the thumb, which meant that the cable design rode cock-eyed about two inches off of center. Yuck.

It's a little more complicated if you want to create a proper thumb gusset. A real thumb looks very nice and wears well, but the math can be tricky. My advice, if you want to make a custom knit, is to base it off the calculations of an existing pattern. And beware of row gauge: it will make or break your thumb gusset. If it's too tall or too short, it will turn out very badly.

Stupid thumbs!

Image courtesy Flickr/.taf