What's On Our Needles: Mittens for Felting

October descends and two things are inescapable for me: winter is coming where I live, and my hands get cold. I suffer from something called Raynaud's phenomenon. It's a circulatory problem, and when my hands and feed experience cold the blood vessels spasm and the blood flow is restricted. It's not very dangerous, but it's unpleasant, and I work very hard to stop attacks by keeping my hands and feet warm.

Keeping me warm through to December.

This means that I start wearing mittens in October, and often have them on through April.

Now, it is also an inescapable truth that hand-knit mittens for very cold climates need to be well-thought out.  A single layer of knitted fabric has holes in it that can let a biting wind through.

A stranded colorwork mitten is much warmer… the unused strand creates a lining, which keeps the wind out, and adds a layer to trap warmth. My  Morse Code mitts were designed with this in mind…

These sorts of mitts usually serve me nicely to late December, when the temperature starts dropping below about -10 degrees C during the day.  At that point, however, I have to resort to commercially bought mittens.

As a knitter, this always seems a bit sad to me…. surely I should be able to keep myself warm with the work of own hands.

This year, as the weather has started to turn, I've been experimenting…  I figure that if a stranded colorwork fabric has 2 layers to trap heat, I could go one step further and increase the windproof-ness of them by felting them.

So I knitted comically large mittens…

Oversized and ready for felting.

With some yarn leftover from other projects (hence the rather odd color combo), I worked a pair of stranded colorwork mittens that I planned to felt.

I then spent an evening weaving in ends, and then visited my friend with the top-loading washing machine. (I have a front-loader, and it's a great washing machine but terrible felter due to the limited agitation.), and felted 'em.

Smaller and windproof. Possibly also bulletproof.

They're much thicker now, and I am quite certain entirely windproof. Very happy with them.

They are still a bit oversized, however… there's just enough space for me to create a small, light lining mitten in a fine and warm fiber to wear inside.  Perhaps a laceweight silk and mohair…

I'm hoping these will keep me going until January at least!

[image error]