The cuff on lady and girl mittens have lace or rib cuffs.
The cuffs of the oldest mittens were often knitted to be relatively long. They could be more than 10 cm for small lady mittens, which by today's standards would be considered girls mittens. This was logically referred to as long cuffs. For mittens for sale the standard for lady cuffs was set to 10 cm. These days they are often knitted to be shorter, 8 cm is common.
Lace cuffs comes in many variations, both in stitch number in, and between the hook patterns. The knitters often have their own preferred variations. Rib cuffs are also knitted with a personal twist. Often the knitters can have their own stripe pattern that's not used by others. It can have mirror symmetry, meaning that it has different stripes that are knitted and mirrored about the middle, or it can be stripe compositions or stripe configurations that repeat themselves on the length of the cuff.
Kids mittens sometimes have a slipped stitch border and extra bands or elastics in the transition between the cuff and the hand of the mitten. This ensures that the mitten fits extra snugly. Older mittens always have a slimmer border that reaches around the entire hand below the main pattern. There are handsome examples of mittens with up to four borders in this transition. On younger mittens this border is often omitted.
If a tight fitting cuff is desired, or the wearer has thin wrists, it might be a good idea to knit alternating two normal and two purl stitches. This causes a the cuff to contract a decent bit. If a more open, wider cuff is desired it might be a good idea to knit something like alternating three normal and one purl stitch. If the stitch number is divisible by three one can knit two normal and on purl stitch. There are lots of possible adaptions.
