Maid Agnes' mittens
History
Agnes lived in Sandvik on North Oland and all her life she worked as a maid to the Manager of the Quarry. She was small and more than likely tough and probably laboured hard in a wet, cold and windy climate. Agnes left a pair of mittens and the left mitt is the one best preserved. The mitt is very small and remarkable in so far as that it goes up a bit on the wrist. This was probably due to the fact that, in those days, the women did not have any jackets but only big shawls wrapped around them in winter. This created a gap on the forearm between the mitten and the shawl when they carried buckets and pails for example. Last autumn Ullcentrum got the opportunity to borrow the left mitt, which meant that Ann could take a closer look at it and she then decided to also knit up an exact copy of it. For this Ann chose Ullcentrum's regular 2-ply wool yarn together with size 2.5 mm needles. She discovered that there are big black areas in-between the grey pattern, so if the yarns are not twisted, there would be long floats on the back. There were no such floats on the mitt. Instead the yarns were as neatly twisted as can be seen on the Dutchmen's wellmade garments. When Ann knitted her mitten, she also twisted the yarns when there were at least 4 strands, whilst up to 3 strands were left to run freely. Ann's mitten turned out a bit bigger or - rather quite a bit bigger, which she found interesting. When looking closer at Agnes' mitt, the yarn did not look as our woollen yarn. Instead Agnes' yarn was quite tightly spun with flat (parallelised wool fibres) and thinner. The black yarn did not feel like homespun. Perhaps it was spun in England on a 'Spinning Jenny' machine, which would have resulted in a yarn, which is in-between woollen and worsted. As for the needles, they might have been size 1.5 - 1.75 mm and maybe even made of wire. If you follow the pattern below, the mittens will be big enough for felting in the machine. Should you wish a smaller mitt (normal lady's size), we would recommend using a wool yarn, measuring 400 - 500 m per 100 gram together with needles 1.75 - 2 mm.
Material's
Ullcentrum's 2-ply wool yarn, 50 g of ea colour Double pointed needles size 2.5 mm/US1.5
Pattern
With the ground colour (col 1), cast on 72 stitches (sts) Work a k2, p2 rib for 7 rounds (rnds) Add the pattern colour (col 2) and continue in k2, p2 rib, purling with the dark and knitting with the light colour Diagram A: Rib, k2, p2. The dark colour = purl
With col 1, work 6 rnds in stockinette stitch (st st) Work 13 rows in pattern B following the diagram
Diagram B, lower border With col 1, work in st st for 6 rnds Adding col 2, work a k2, p2 rib for 6 rnds , alternating the colours every 2 sts With col 1, work in st st for 6 rnds Start pattern C on the inside of the palm and the wheat braid on the outside, following the 2 diagrams below; 36 sts for the outside and 36 sts for the inside of the mitt
Diagram C, inside of palm
Wheat braid, 36 sts At the same time, start the pattern for the thumb. For the inside of the left mitt, always start with 1 st in col 2 and end with (1 st in col 2, 1 st in col 1, 1 st in col 2), see diagram
Thumb diagram, inside At the thumb hole, knit in a differently coloured yarn over 14 sts After the thumb hole, decrease 1 st on the outside of the mitt = 35 sts
Star
The thumb is worked over 30 sts. Remember to make the same lines on the inside of the thumb as on the outside Decreasesforbothmittandthumb: Decrease at each side on both the inside and outside = 4 decreases per round until approx. 20 sts remain on the mitt and 6 sts on the thumb Thumb diagram, outside
Finish Transfer the stitches to markers or safety pins, turn the mitt inside out, transfer the stitches back on 2 needles and seam them from the inside
