The Great and Mighty Mitten Hunt

I want to make a pair of mittens, and I am consumed with the thrill of the hunt. I’ve spent two days looking now and although I have seen many wonderful mittens, none of them are quite right. I feel like I’ll know it when I see it, but right now I feel pickier than a two year old. I click and click, look and look, and all that I keep thinking is “that’s not it, that’s not it, that’s not it… those are too big and those have too many colours and those have a funny thumb and I don’t want cables and those are the wrong gauge and… it turns out I have all sorts of feelings about mittens. Here (apparently, since I’ve rejected any pattern that doesn’t fit this list) are my criteria.

-The mittens should be fine and fancy, like presents for your hands in the winter. There is very little to bring a woman happiness in February, and I depend on mittens for a great deal of my joy. I have good plain mittens for warmth. These will be for dress. I like ’em fussy.

-They should be two colour mittens, since I have two colours of this beautiful Gauja Wool. I bought it at the Knitters Fair last year (or the year before, I forget) and I’d forgotten how much I was looking forward to using it.


gauja190909.jpg

– They should be classic. I love the traditional look of Norwegian, Latvian or Selbu mittens, and I’m yet to embrace the modern non-symetrical mitten like Anemoi. Not saying they aren’t darn pretty, just …. well. That’s not my mitten.

– They should not have squirrels on them, for while that mitten (and these ones) are very pretty, I prefer not to immortalize my enemies. I fear the mittens would be found after I am gone and misinterpreted as reverence rather than irony.

-They should be knit at a gauge for fingering weight wool.

-They should not be too wide, because that’s not an elegant thing in a mitten.

– They should have a pointed top and thumb for I think that dress mittens should always have pointed tops, and there’s almost nothing you can say to convince me otherwise.

-They should not have ribbing, because it turns out that I think that’s for “common” mittens.

– They should not be “fingerless” mittens, because (and I really can’t stress this enough) this is Canada.

– They should not be gloves, for gloves make your fingers all lonely.

– I am enamored of snowflakes, and think that a blue and white snowflake mitten would simply be the bomb. I dream of a pointy snowflake mitten.

-It should be in a book or magazine that I already have (and I have lots) or something that I can download right then and there, because apparently, I think that instant gratification takes too long.

See the problem? I’m apparently rather fussy, but I truly believe that my ideal mitten is out there, and that one of you knows where it is. Mitten hunt, anyone?

(PS: if you want to post a link in the comments, remember to do just one in the body of the comment. My spam software thinks that if you want to leave several URLs that you’re probably up to no good. The spam software doesn’t understand a mitten hunt, and while I could take that feature off, I’d have comments full of manhood advice by sundown.)

(PPS: What the hell is up with my formatting?)