Mittens. Glorious Mittens.

It’s when I make something like these mittens that I see what really makes me tick.  It’s when form and function meet to create a beautiful useful object.  Perfection.  And that’s what these mittens are.

The design for them at least.  My stranded knitting tensioning still needs some work.

But these mittens…  I could go on and on and on about them.  Just ask my husband.  These two patterns are from Selbuvotter and have the super original names Annemor#4 and Annemor#5. (PSA: Always check for errata.  I have the first printing and there are some mistakes in there.  As far as I know, the errata page covers them all. I made the mistake of not checking and got all sorts of confused…)

My daughters have worn these kinds of mittens before.  They’ve worn them and worn them again.  They’re the the first mittens they reach for come winter. Before the polar fleece ones.  Before the fancy warm and waterproof ones.  Why? They’re warm, windproof, not waterproof but close enough, and pretty.

Warm.  Stranded knitting means two layers of yarn the whole way around.  And that yarn is wool.  Wool is warm.   (Side note: for the life of me, I’ve never understood people who think you need super technical fleece and such for winter, especially in NYC.  Wool, people.  Wool has kept me warm at -30C.  Trust me, you want wool.)

Windproof.  These mittens are knit a wee bit tighter.  Plus, two layers.  And, as they get used, those two layers will slightly felt together, making the mittens even more windproof.

Sort of waterproof.  So wool isn’t waterproof unless you treat it with lanolin (I think).  Which I don’t. However, wool can absorb a lot of water before it actually feels wet.  A lot. And even when you finally get wet, it still takes a while to get cold.  The girls have come indoors from over an hour of playing in the wet snow and their mittens were still keeping them warm.  They did take a good long while to dry though…

And pretty.  Do I really need to explain that one?  For these ones, the girls picked the light color (Green Mountain Spinnery Sock Art Forrest) and I picked the dark grey (Classic Elite Yarns Alpaca Sox).  I would normally have chosen two shades of something like Knitpicks Palette (not my fave but works and is inexpensive) or Jamieson Shetland Spindrift (which I’ve never used).  Something wooly and a little sticky, not necessarily soft.  But the store we went to do didn’t have that kind of yarn in so we bought what they had. My choice would have gone towards something a bit brighter for the light color and maybe a bit more colorful for the dark.

And there you have it.  Perfection.  Mittens that perform their function extremely well without sacrificing any beauty. I need some for me now…

PS: Hopefully, the Annemor links take you to my Ravelry project pages.  Let me know if they don’t and I’ll fix it.

PS2: For V’s mittens, the original pattern doesn’t have the ravens mirrored.  So I mirrored them for the second mitten.  Basically, it was just knitting the top raven first and then the bottom one.  Since the patterns are charted, it’s super easy to do.  And voilà! Mirrored ravens.

About deuxsouriceaux

Creative mommy at home to two wonderful little girls, trying to juggle family, sewing, exercise, family, knitting, photography, and did I mention family?