At 08:36 AM 12/18/04 -0400, Margot Walker wrote: >As someone who grew up in northern Canada, the reasons we wore mittens >as children, and still wear mittens occasionally as adults are: 1 - >they're much warmer than gloves and 2- if it is really cold (minus 20 or >colder), you can wear two pairs of mittens or a pair of gloves under the >mittens.
While browsing in a department store several years ago, I came across a pair of mittens made by someone who had heard of wearing gloves under mittens and didn't quite grasp why: the sewn-in lining of the mittens had an individual sheath for each finger! I wonder whether anyone was dumb enough to buy them. My cycling mittens are split into two fingers: warmer than gloves, but you can still work the brake levers. A friend called them "thalidomide mittens" -- thalidomide was in the news at the time. In recent years, split mittens have become commercially available under the name of "lobster claws". I made a set of three pairs: thin wool mittens that fit over my cycling gloves, worsted-weight mittens made to fit over the thin mittens -- but they can be worn alone because the mittens are thin -- and a thin pair of black wool gloves to be worn instead of the cycling gloves when it gets *really* cold. But I lost those and I'm wearing a pair of store-bought mystery-fiber gloves, as it may be several years before I can knit a replacement. I haven't even got around to darning the hole where the factory didn't put in a gusset. I wear them mostly for walking and driving, since it hasn't been cold enough for mittens this year, and I don't ride much any more. -- Joy Beeson http://home.earthlink.net/~joybeeson/ http://home.earthlink.net/~dbeeson594/ROUGHSEW/ROUGH.HTM http://home.earthlink.net/~beeson_n3f/ west of Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A. where it's trying to snow. To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
