Saturday, November 29, 2014

Mitts

We received a box from Fleece Artist yesterday. Fleece Artist is located in Nova Scotia and does an amazing job hand dying yarn.

We have lots of hand dyed fleece - merino sliver in 50gram skeins.

There were two different mitten kits in the box.


Soft Mitts

A strand of wool held with a strand of mohair knit on 5mm needles. These are super soft!!

No two kits are the same.



Thrum Mitts
From Knitting Daily
"Thrum" originally referred to the short lengths of waste yarn leftover after woven cloth was cut off the loom. In the spirit of necessary thriftiness, craftspeople would find a variety of uses for these thrums--stuffing pillows and mattresses, and after a while, knitting them into mittens and hats to provide an extra layer of warmth. 
Each thrum, or short length of yarn, would be worked together with the main knitting yarn as a single stitch, with the ends of the thrum left hanging inside the mitten to provide insulation. Lovely! Except that people soon discovered that the yarny thrums could catch on fingers, and even fray. 
The second type of thrum works much better, and has been a tradition for generations in the chilly-but-gorgeous environs of Newfoundland and Labrador up here in Canada. This type of thrum is actually roving, or unspun sheep's wool, separated into wisps, which are then knit into the stitches along with the working yarn as before. The ends of the fleece form little poufy pillows inside your mittens, and your fingers start thanking you the minute a pair of thrummed mittens is on your hands. 
Basically, you're making a sheepskin for the inside of your mittens. With the wide variety of dyed wool roving available these days, you can choose a rainbow of colors from which to make your thrums. (You can purchase unspun roving at many local yarn shops; or take a trip to your local fibre festival!)
Visit The Yarn Harlot's blog to read about thrumming... 

I had a pair of thrum mitts (who knows where they ended up) and I highly recommend them. I wore them when we went to the Grey Cup in Hamilton and it was a cold, snowy day. My hands were very happy!

Speaking of the Grey Cup. GO CATS GO!!!!!

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