Mittens Are Warm

Wandering the mountains in the winter will convince any sober individual of the need for keeping your digits in working order.  Snowboarding, snowshoeing, skiing and winter fishing worked on my hands in a most uncomfortable fashion until I discovered the mitten.  It was on a particularly cold winter day while snowboarding that I lost a glove on the lift.  My good friend's father was ski patrol and had gotten us on the mountain half day for free and I had a few dollars in my rather sad looking wallet.  Into the skin-you-alive shop also known as the gear shop I went.  On the rack were a sexy new pair of gloves complete with leathery palm bits all at a minor cost of way more than I had or the clearance bin mittens in XL which felt thinner than my long johns on insulation.  So I am on my way up the lift with my new mittens when I notice something strange.  My hands are warmer than I can recall them ever having been in my gloves.  Converted I was.

Fast forward two decades and several pairs of fingerless rag wools and mitten shells later.  Today my obsession lies firmly in the aquatic realm of sea kayaking, or more specifically Greenland style sea kayaking.  Having completed a Tuilik and a pair of mittens to go with them I decided to improve on the design.  Pair one consisted 4 bits of neoprene sewed to produce a mitten.  Pair two consisted of the same basic design as pair one but with sleeker lines and a better cinch cord.  Pair three have taken a new road. 

Wandering on the qajaq influenced web I stumbled across some images of mittens made and used in the arctic.  With what I gather is a rather chilly climate it was simple enough to reckon that these gloves must be rather well designed.  A far better understanding of gear and its both inherent vulnerabilities and those which can be mitigated started to take shape.  A sewn garment is at its weakest at the seam.  This is especially true for waterproof items.  It became clear to me.  The next phase in my mitten quest would involve an attempt at significantly reducing seamed lengths.

The perfect guinea pig in any case is a monkey.  But since all I have handy is my 19 month old daughter Lili she'll have to do.  With Lili's hand placed ever so cutely on a clipboard her hand and forearm were traced.  Then a general silhouette was produced of her hand.  This with some seam allowance added was copied three times onto another piece of paper.  Modifications were made to provide fabric for the thumb and voila, glove.

My dear little girl put them on with a bit of help and proceeded to wear them from the living room to the bathtub and then after some wringing out with a towel, to bed.  The next step will be to take this general pattern idea and produce some paddling mittens which will hopefully fit well, be comfortable on the paddle, have minimal seams as well as good seam placement and provide a watertight seal along the seams and at the wrist cinch cord.