peerie flooers mittens

Gloves and mittens really are bloody tricky to model successfully. As soon as you stick a pair of hands inside them the trouble begins. You have to give the hands something to do, and this is difficult to accomplish without insane artifice. The leaf-throwing you have seen, but I also tried other strategies this morning, such as issuing strange commands

imitating a malfunctioning robot

grabbing a birch tree

And, my old favourite, hugging a sycamore

As you know, these mittens took several attempts to get right. They began as fingerless mitts, but, because of the 2-inch-deep repeats and their attendant colour restrictions, I found a mitt-design very difficult to balance. During the process, I was reminded several times of my conversation with SpillyJane in which she describes the creative possibilities of working within restricted parameters. All I can say is that my respect for her — already great — has increased about ten-fold. Anyway, the reason why I initially thought fingerless mitts would be a good idea was that one could, theoretically, squeeze them out of the yarn remaining from the hat. But with these mittens, you’ll probably have to get hold of another ball of each of the two background colours. A little extra yarn has enabled me to make the lined cuffs deeper and more cosy, to echo the hat-crown chart on the mitten thumb, and to create a much more more balanced overall design.

The pattern is now available here or here. And you might think I’m mad, but I’m now considering a peerie flooers garment. Not in fingering-weight, though. More anon.