A Pair of MIttens

 Every textile has 1001 stories to tell: personal, technical, cultural. These mittens were a gift from my grandson. I was back in Chicago for a family Christmas. He came into my daughter's flat from a Christmas fair or a church sale or something and immediately gave away what he had won or bought, clearly enjoying the giving. I am missing him terribly. The ex pat tax is sometimes very high. A decade ago he was a generous teenager; now he is a man. I have no doubt he is as winsome now as then, but I will never have that decade of watching him grow into a man. I have the mittens and memory.

Chicago is a city of neighbourhoods. The mittens might have come from the part of Chicago settled originally by Swedes. The mittens are in the Nordic style. I like to think a Swedish grandmother passed along to her daughter or grandaughter how to do these mittens. Some knitting friends and I put together Northen Loops Intergenerational Knitting to foster, among other things, the sharing of the knowledge not just the specifics of this mitten or any other single thing, but the power that comes from knowing how to make things of your own design. I like to think also that the church sale gave the mitten-knitter a reason to knit. One of the best legacies of Northern Loops was to get an older woman who carried in her head how to knit a glove back into knitting because we gave her someone to knit for.

In addition to the shape of the mitten, the design motif speaks of northern countries--compass rose. I've seen it in Norway visiting family there and in my Fair Isle pattern books. The pattern in the palm--using two yarns of different colours is also part of the Nordic design.

The mittens are wool. If I had purchased them locally I would probably know the knitter, the spinner, perhaps even the sheep who gave her fleece for them. Those are all stories that these mittens might reveal if they had not travelled so far from Sweden or Norway to Chicago to me to now be featured in a photo along a road in Caithness on the first double-cold day of this winter.

A double-cold day is one that requires--no, make that demands--two layers of clothing everywhere. So I put on my thermal leggings beneath my walking trousers and these mittens over my fingerless gloves--so I can liberate my fingertips to take photos. The mittens, themselves, however, are two layers. If not for photofingers,they would have kept me warm enough on their own. The designer knew what northern cold is like. The tweed-effect of the design across the palm is the result of the red being carried along behind the grey while waiting for its appearance on the outside. This 'stranding' results in a double layer of wool.

 Finally, take a look at the thumb. The thumb shows off not only the skill of the knitter with its design but also something every mitten needs--a gusset. Take a look at your hands. In kindergarten, you put your hand flat on a piece of paper and drew around it and called it a mitten, but our thumbs--that marvellous evolutionary achivement in a digit--means that our hands are not flat. Our thumbs want to hang out on the inner side of our hands. This mitten knows that and hugs the thumb in its own swaddling.

I like to think that these mittens, like me, feel a connection with this northern land even though it's not where either of us was born.