Knitted Objects Always End Up TOO BIG!!! ???

[hana0205]

Hi!

I'm a beginner knitter (about 2 months..) and i've knitte quite a few things already

I've knitted various scarves, and I decided I need a more difficult project to challenge myself, and started

knitting mittens!

(I used the pattern in this post:

http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=67267.0)


(pic also from the link to pattern)

The problem was that they were WAAY TOO BIG!! not just a little loose, when I knitted exactly the way the

pattern told me, the finger part of the mitten was twice the length of my fingers!!   I even used the child

size numbers just in case! and when i took out the rows to fit the length of my fingers, there was still too

much room in the mitten, that it fell off everytime I'd put it on and stand with my arm down  . I decided

that maybe mittens were too much of a challenge, and tried to knitt these cable wristwarmers (the pattern

seemed easy enough)

Wristwarmers pattern:

http://wineandneedles.blogspot.com/2004/12/wrist-warmer-pattern.html


(this pic also from link)

 but again, it ended up being too big... and I used one size smaller needles than the pattern offerred!

I'm completely lost as to what is the problem!!? It can't possibly be that I have impossibly tiny hands (trust

me on this one  ) , or is it that I'm knitting WAY too loose??

Any kind of help would be GREATLY appreciated!! thanks! 

[orangeabsinthe]

did you check the gauge before you started?  that's very important, esp for non-scarf items. 

[subloke]

Do you have pics of the mittens and/or wristwarmers you made? 

It may be that you knit loosely, or that the yarn was not the same weight as those called for in the patterns.  Even though I have a tendency to neglect the "check gauge" part of patterns, whenever I've made something that turned out too big it was a result of a combination of the wrong yarn and not getting gauge with my knitting. 

[hst]

If your mittens are wool you can felt them!  Then they will fit I bet.  Good luck!

[hana0205]

thanks for the quick replies!
the gauge tip really helped and as I looked into it more through the internet, i realized one of my biggest mistakes was the needle size! I've never learned the difference between US size and metric size .. heh heh
and my needles actually happend to be twice the size of recommended size.
Mistakes are there so that we can learn from them, don't ya think?