About the Author

Since Fox & Geese & Fences was published more than twenty years ago, Robin Orm Hansen’s books have been recognized as authoritative sources for traditional mittens, knitted and otherwise. (America’s favorite knitting writer, Elizabeth Zimmermann, said that Fox & Geese & Fences was “just what America’s knitters need!”) For the past two decades, Robin has continued searching out traditional knitters New England, the Canadian Maritimes, and Scandinavia, collecting nearly extinct family patterns for practical handknit mittens. She tests the patterns, clarifying or adding to the directions as needed, and makes them available to today’s knitters in an easy-to-follow format.

Robin has also written articles on traditional knitting for Interweave Knits, Knitter’s Magazine, Vogue Knitting, and Knitting Now and has taught workshops from Texas to Surrey, England. Her original article on fishermen’s mittens, “New England Boiled Mittens,” was selected for The Best of Yankee Magazine, a collec tion of articles spanning fifty years. She earned her doctorate in folklore and folk life from Boston University, based on her knitting research in Canada and Maine.

In recent years, Robin has made several trips to the remote Faroe Islands, north of Scotland, collecting traditional double-knitting patterns used on sweaters. She’s found that many Faroese patterns are also used by North American knitters—possibly because of shared fishing grounds and trade routes.

Robin lives with her husband, one son, and twenty-five sheep on a small farm in West Bath, Maine.