Wool mittens are warm, but a knitted fabric is a mesh, full of holes. The icy wind blows, and being a lazy wind, it will go right through, rather than around, the ordinary wool mitten. All the mitten patterns in this book are old-time inventions to deal with this very aspect of the knitted wool mitten.
One of the most widespread methods is to knit alternating two strands of yarn, so that every hole is backed by the other strand of yarn. In Dalarna, Sweden, this is done in one color, with a little twist behind, but in most places, it’s done with two, and the colors are alternated to make patterns taken from patchwork and weaving, with names from the surrounding world. You will find these double-knit patterns in the second part of this book.
But there are other ways of getting rid of or covering the holes. The most usual in today’s world is to cover the mitten with a yellow horsehide or Goretex™ mitten. This solution is like wearing a paper bag over the head to hide problem skin: it solves the problem but it isn’t good looking. It covers up the beautiful mitten.
A mitten can be felted by washing it in hot, soapy water and rinsing it in cold, vigorously and repeatedly. The fishermen’s mittens presented here are treated this way and shrink into dense, matted hand coverings that are worn wet, the wetness serving to make them even more windproof and dense.
In both Europe and America, knitted mittens have been covered with pile or lined with pile, or lined with tufts or rolls of fleece or loops of wool yarn. All are handsome solutions. Some of these are offered here, as well as a mitten crocheted on a special homemade hook in a way that eliminates all the lacy holes one associates with crochet. “And don’t call it ‘crochet,’” I was told by Albert Miller of Turner, Maine, who taught me how. “Call them ’mittens hooked on a dowel’!”
Elizabeth Berg, a Norwegian nurse who retired to Chebeague Island, Maine, in the 1970s, re-created the directions for fishermen’s mittens from a mitten knitted by the late Minnie Doughty, an island native.
STEVE MUSKIE PHOTO