gloves / mittens / mitts
glove. A cover for the hand, or for the hand and wrist, with a separate sheath for each finger. The latter circumstance distinguishes the glove from the mitten. — Webster, 1882
mitt. A mitten; also, a thin, fingerless cover for the wrist and hand. — Webster, 1882
mitten. A cover for the hand, worn to defend it from cold or other injury. It differs from a glove in not having a separate cover for each finger. — Webster, 1882
The boys who went east last winter to find better two-thirds, have come back without them. They report that the eastern girls kept them in mittens all winter and were very good generally, but they have concluded to marry Dakota girls, whose equals they claim they have not met in their travels. — Brookings County (Dakota Territory) Press, May 28, 1881.
See those knobby mitts for women at Knechts. — Iroquois Herald, Iroquis, Dakota Territory, November 3, 1882.
Lace gloves with fingers as well as with long wrists will be worn in the spring, as well as lace mitts and half-fingered lace gloves. — Sioux Valley News (Canton, Dakota Territory), March 28, 1879.
Fifteen per cent off on lined Mitts & Gloves at Wilder’s Variety store. — De Smet Leader, February 15, 1890.
There are multiple types of hand coverings written about in the Little House books: these include mitts, mittens, and gloves. In the books, both children and adults wear mittens for warmth, while gloves are only worn by adults. There’s no distinction made between heavier work gloves and thinner gloves worn with dressier clothes; this was probably something that Wilder didn’t feel the need to explain.
Mitts and wristlets are similar in construction in that neither covers the fingers. Mitts are fashionable and lacy and worn by women with their dressiest clothes. As shown in the period tintype here, mitts had the beginning of a separate thumb, but it wasn’t worked past the knuckle, if that far. In Little Town on the Prairie (see Chapter 9, “Blackbirds”), Laura busily knits a pair of mitts for Mary to take to college, using brown silk thread. Newspapers from the spring of 1881 reported that “colored lace mitts, in every style, will be worn more this season than ever before.” Mitts with much longer cuffs than shown in the tintype were the height of fashion in the 1880s. Today, lacy mitts might be worn in a fancy wedding, but plainer worn to keep the wrist warm might be called “fingerless gloves.” Sketches of mitts below are from Godey’s magazine, Volume 99 (1879).
K is for knitting.
There are countless mitten patterns online and found in knitting books, as well as videos to help you along the way with unfamiliar stitches and techniques. When I decided to knit red wool mittens as a Christmas present for some adult Little House friends in the mid-1990s, I came up with a basic pattern to follow, row by row, as I was usually knitting while doing something else and could easily be distracted. Starting at the ribbed cuff, these mittens are worked back and forth on regular knitting needles using worsted weight wool, then the seam is sewed up using a long tail of yarn left on your needle after you close the tip. The thumb is worked when you get to that point, with no cutting or joining of yarn. I now usually knit mittens in the round, but this pattern is easily adaptable. I’m including the pattern HERE because it’s not on my current computer, I have one print copy left, and I keep misplacing it. My copy is indeed a beginner pattern, with each row spelled out quite plainly and written so that you can check off the rows as you go. Still, you’ll need to know things like how to cast on stitches, knit & purl, and how to work some sort of increase and decrease. [— From my old blog, post dated September 5, 2006]
Six Pairs.
And his red mittens were on a string that went up the sleeves of his coat and across the back of his neck. That was so he couldn’t lose them. -Farmer Boy, Chapter 1, “School Days”
Mittens are mentioned in all eight original Little House books; they are often given and received as Christmas gifts. Both Laura Ingalls and Almanzo Wilder are said to wear red wool mittens connected by a string that runs through their coat sleeves and across the shoulders so they wouldn’t get lost. One could take off a mitten and simply leave it dangling out of the coat sleeve.
If you want Little House mittens to decorate your Christmas tree, you can have more than just the red ones…
Jack Frost is said to wear white mittens in Little House in the Big Woods, where Ma and Aunt Eliza knit mittens in squares of red and white for Pa and Uncle Peter. In Farmer Boy, Mother Wilder knits mittens for Almanzo using an unidentified “fancy stitch” on the cuff. One Christmas in On the Banks of Plum Creek, Mary receives a blue pair and Laura, a red pair. Laura and Mary knit “Fourth of July” mittens for Carrie in By the Shores of Silver Lake.
The little 3-inch mittens pictured here are knitted back and forth on size 3 double-pointed needles using a sport weight wool yarn. I used 4 needles so I could leave the yarn on one pair of needles while knitting the thumb with the other pair. I crocheted the thumb seam closed because it was faster. I didn’t weave in any ends; they were brought to the inside of the mitten, tied off and cut, leaving a short tail.
THIS is the pattern I use to knit mitten ornaments. It might not make sense unless you’re a mitten knitter already; sorry. [—From my old blog, post dated December 2, 2007]
“I wish I had a mitten for my nose.”
In The Long Winter (see Chapter 26, “Breathing Spell”), Laura Ingalls Wilder tells of the special joke that Pa and Grace share. When Pa comes home from hauling hay, Grace asks Pa if his nose had frozen. Of course, in this weather Pa’s ears and his nose froze so that he had to rub them with snow to thaw them. He pretended to Grace that his nose grew longer every time it froze, and Grace pretended to believe that it did. This was their own special joke.
“Froze it five or six times today,” Pa answered her, tenderly feeling his red, swollen nose. “If spring doesn’t come soon, I’m going to have a nose as long as an elephant’s. Ears like an elephant’s, too.” That made Grace laugh.
In her handwritten Hard Winter manuscript, Laura added a bit to the joke. Pa comments that he “wishes he had a mitten for his nose.”
Today is the coldest day so far in my little part of Montana. It’s below zero after noon, even though the sun is shining. The perfect day for staying indoors or, if you have to be out in it, for wearing your nose mitten. Lo and behold, there are other people that know the benefits of nose mittens. You can read about it HERE.
Last winter I knitted some nose mittens. If you’re a knitter and have knitted socks, a nose mitten is no more than the toe of a sock knitted as pointy as you like. There are instructions for knitting your own nose mitten (or nosewarmer, as the designer remembers them). I like the tassel on the pointed end. I was going to brave the elements to build a small snowman to model a nose warmer for the blog photo, but our snow is as fine as sand and won’t pack into a snowball. So I used the next best thing: the face of a clock! [—From my old blog, post dated December 7, 2005]
The adult mittens and mitten ornament patterns created by me and linked here are free to use, and it’s fine with me if you sell whatever you create using these patterns. You do not have permission to sell my patterns for profit.
glove (TLW 20-21; LTP 16; THGY 6; FFY year 1; OTWH intro)
mitt (FB 26; LTP 9)
mitten (BW 2, 4-6; FB 1, 3, 5-7, 9-10, 20, 23, 26; LHP 1, 17, 19; BPC 31, 34-35, 37; SSL 15-19, 21; TLW 5, 9, 11, 14, 16, 29, 32; LTP 14, 16, 18; THGY 1-4, 8, 11, 25; PG); see also wristlets
as Christmas gift (BW 4; BPC 21; SSL 21)
connected by a string up one sleeve and down the other (BW 6; FB 1, 5; BPC 31)
Fourth of July mittens (SSL 21)
knitted (BW 4-5; FB 26; SSL 19; PG)
Laura knits mittens for Baby Carrie (PG)
red and white checked (BW 4)