Marianna in her hat and mittens
Every family has their traditions, some are carefully kept from generation to generation and others are allowed to lapse as the next generation takes over. And some are worth picking up again even when it has been years since they were kept. In my family, we have one that I have been restoring over the past few years with hopes of being able to teach the next generation to continue it.
When my mother was a child, her maternal grandmother, who was a seamstress by trade as well as a knitter & spinner, would knit wool mittens for her grandchildren. In my family this would have been a serious undertaking as my mother is the 2nd of 9 children; a lot of little hands to knit for each year! My mother tells me that each winter her grandmother would present them with a batch of wool mittens that had been knit and then boiled in order to full them against the cold. Her grandmother’s mittens were treasured by the children as they kept little hands far warmer than the store bought acrylic variety; so much so that by the end of the winter (when many had gone missing) the children would argue over the remaining, mismatched wool mittens rather than take the matching store bought ones when it was time to play in the snow.
Unfortunately for me, my maternal grandmother is not a knitter. I believe her mother likely taught her at some point but she became a sewer rather than a knitter as did my mother after her. Therefore, my generation did not benefit from the tradition of handknit mittens in winter (how I wish we had!) and as the current Grandmother (my mom) is also not a knitter our children were in danger of the same fate!
For the past several years I have been working to turn things around for my children and my nieces and now little nephew. I have altered the tradition a bit, expanding it to include a warm wool hat in addition to the mittens. And I’m including the two nieces on my husband’s side of the family which gives me a total of 7 children to knit for. In addition, each year I try to knit for at least one or two children outside the immediate family, usually family friends, for whom I know a new wool hat and mittens will be a welcome winter gift.
In that spirit, this year I am attempting to knit as many as 10-12 sets of mittens and hats to be given out to all the children in the family and a few others. Rather than choosing the colors for each child ahead of time I’ve taken a different approach this year; I am knitting hats & mittens in 3 sizes (toddler, preschooler, grade-schooler) and then allowing the children to choose for themselves which set they would like. I have also taken to heart the advice of one of my favorite knitting authors, Elizabeth Zimmerman, and making mittens in sets of 3 to provide a spare for when the first one goes missing as they so often do.
My son refers to his hand=knit mittens as “Snowball Fight Mittens” and so that is what they are. I am currently working on writing up the pattern for the set and will present it as a free pattern on Ravelry as soon as it is finished. It is my hope to inspire you to knit up a set for the children in your life, that perhaps my family tradition may become yours as well.
Snowball Fight Mittens & Hat set
As for the hat set pattern, I hope to work on it this weekend if things go well and perhaps have it available by sometime next week. Thanks for the comments & please keep them coming, feedback is a great thing to have!
