Twenty-some years ago, Down East Books went out on a limb to publish its first knitting book—and my first book—Fox & Geese & Fences: A Collection of Traditional Maine Mittens. Before that, it was generally assumed that American knitters worked from patterns in books or magazines and that only European knitters carried patterns down in families and communities.
Since then, other researchers have found more knitting traditions that cross the North American continent and have documented sweater, mitten, and cap traditions in Native American, AngloAmerican, and other ethnic communities in both North and South America.1
My father’s family—the Halls and the Linscotts—were from Maine, but his father’s parents went west to Missouri and Oklahoma. By an odd chance, my father was assigned to the U.S. Coast Artillery base on Great Diamond Island, Maine, when I was born. We lived there for perhaps six months, and my brother and sister and I were raised in almost every other state and three countries, but never came back to Maine as a family.
When my husband and I moved to Bath, Maine, I wanted deeply to be a native. I even bought Bert & I records to acquire the local accent, not knowing that the speaker, Marshall Dodge, was a Connecticut native caricaturing one of many Maine accents.
Then, in the late 1970s, I discovered a Maine mitten-knitting tradition different from anything I had ever seen—simple two-colored geometric patterns on the hands, and cuffs knitted in vertically striped stockinette. From Nora Johnson of Five Islands and Pat Zamore of Brunswick, I learned the pattern names—snowflake, fox and geese, stripes, compass, partridge—and I happily made mittens for my children, my husband, and myself, trying to root us more firmly in the landscape.
It occurred to me then that others who had returned to Maine after generations of wandering elsewhere might want to sink roots in this pleasant way. And so I wrote two articles, then a book of mitten and cap patterns—the first knitting patterns I had ever written. I used Gladys Thompson’s 1960s collection of British fishermen’s sweaters2 as a model, expressing the directions mostly in words rather than in detailed charts, and including as much oral history about each pattern as I could, so that each pattern would carry its own stories into other families. Remembering my early efforts to follow published knitting patterns, I tried to simplify, to cut back on abbreviations.
Full of previously unrecorded lore and techniques, Fox & Geese & Fences (1983) became one of Down East Books’ all-time best sellers and was followed by Flying Geese & Partridge Feet (1986), written with another knitting researcher, Nova Scotian Janetta Dexter, who had turned up an overlapping knitting tradition in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
I was encouraged that there were few complaints about the patterns and their format. Turns out, knitters were coping, and maybe even being kind about my directions and their homemade characteristics. Eventually, these two books went out of print—possibly every knitter in the world owned copies by then. Karin Womer at Down East Books contacted me a while ago to see if we could produce a collection of favorites from these two books. ’Twould be easy, we thought. Just combine sections, reproduce patterns, make corrections here and there, make the whole thing fit together.
’Twaren ’t easy.
We contacted a knit technical editor, Dorothy Ratigan, to be sure everything was as it should be. Dottie whacked me this way, then that way, told me how knitting patterns are written by real knitting designers, and insisted on my creating and sticking to a standard format—to be sure nothing was ever left out. Turns out, a lot had been left out all over the place on the first two books. We hope that it’s all here now, and that these patterns will be easier to follow, still enriched by oral history and chockerblock full of different and wonderful techniques of traditional mitten making.
If you live in New England or Atlantic Canada, we hope that you will feel roots sinking into our soil as you knit. These mittens and caps are all from the past, and can link you to our shared history and make you feel more “to home” in the Northeast even if you come “from away.”
—Robin Hansen
1. Cynthia LeCompte, Priscilla Gibson Roberts, and Lizbet Upitis, among others.
2. Gladys Thompson, Fishermen’s Sweaters from the British Isles, Dover Books, 1971.