Blizzard Mittens

What do you do when you're snowed in? Well, when you have a toddler who refuses to wear his mittens because they're just not comfy enough... you make mittens. Because, well, this snow is going to be here for a while. And mittens are just not optional clothing items right now.



Actually, we've been doing quite a lot. Of course, the rice table has gotten a lot of play. The teenager has played piano (she's working on New York State of Mind) and sewed. We tried our hand at felting for the first time -- and the toddler now has some highly-prized balls of felted wool. We made a fantastic Indian vegetable stew from Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home cookbook -- outstanding. We made popcorn. We played in the snow. We shoveled the snow. We read books. We watched the birds. We made fires. We baked bread. We made snow ice cream. We used our bag of tricks quite a bit.



And I made a pair of mittens to match the toddler's hat. Thank goodness I had enough yarn left over, since I clearly wasn't going anywhere for supplies! I used the basic mitten pattern from The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns. This is a fabulous book to have on hand because it gives the basic structure for the things you would want to knit most often, including exact directions for just about any size and gauge you might possibly need. It is a great reference, and comes in handy time and again. The best part about this mitten pattern is that the two mittens are identical -- no need to worry about right and left.

He loves them. He has been wearing them around the house. Which is completely adorable, and useful because... I see more snow in the forecast! Oh my. I might have to think of a few more things for that bag of tricks.