The long icy walks to the bus have gotten the best of me, and I’ve decided to try my hand at thrummed mittens. I usually work without a pattern, using google image searches as my guide. In the process of looking at the wool-warmed palms the world over (isn’t the internet wonderful?) I came across the word in Thomas Wright’s Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English . The discovery was perfectly timed. I had just listened to Cast On episode 57 “I speak Jive,” which was dedicated to the dying language of the fiber arts community (the episode is old—as always podcasts are piling up and I haven’t been listening). A quick search revealed that Wright’s book was published in 1880, and an even quicker search for the phrase “thrummed mittens” brings up 10,500 pages on google. Thrumming may have been obsolete in 1880, but Wright (poor thing) is obsolete now. The rise in popularity of knitting and the community that the internet enables has resuscitated not only a craft, but also the language we use to speak of it.
This discovery inspired me to start this blog, and where better to start than my new mittens? They saved me when, against all reason, it snowed again this week. Above are the mittens inside out—I’m trying to card and tease the inner wool to create a flat and even surface (I can’t take the lumpy strings of wool in most thrummed mittens, the gaps between which let in air and moisture). Below is the final result. I highly recommend them. The hand you see is snowy, but extremely warm. My camera hand was freezing.
