Mitten purchases (or not): put it off, put them on

Here are three mitten stories.

Mitten Story number one.  
A few years back, as I was wandering about my favorite store*, I came across a pair of furry bear-paw-shaped gloves.   My sister lives in cold climates, and since the price was right (I think 50¢), I snapped them up and bought them for her as a Christmas present.

[* a neighborhood yard sale]

My sister told me that at first, she thought these mittens were a fairly silly present.  They're not water proof; they're not work gloves; they're just sort of big and goofy.   But they're very warm, and they have a feature that she eventually came to love: an opening in the palm that allows you to flip the glove off your fingers while still keeping it on your wrist.  So she discovered she could wear these very warm, but poofy, mittens, and yet do all kinds of fine motor control things (grab car keys, etc) without having to remove the mittens and potentially lose them.

My hand was not sure how to pose itself, so it decided to do a thumbs-up.  

Eventually, she decided she loved the mittens enough that she found the maker online, and went and bought herself a brand new pair.  And when she described to me how much she loved them, while I was lamenting my own cold hands (because I'd lost a favorite pair of mittens one of my daughters had bought me), she mailed me back the mittens that I'd originally gifted her.

And that's the wonderful saga of this first pair of mittens: purchased for cheap on a whim, and loved so much that they've become a bond between me and my sister.  Bear paws, bear hugs, and furry mittens rule the day.

Mitten Story number two.  

My hands and feet get cold really easily.  I got a case of frostbite (or something like it) when I was a kid, and I blame that for poor circulation in my extremities that affects my life to this day.   And the longer I live with my popsicle fingers, the more I grow to favor mittens over gloves, because my hands just don't generate enough heat unless my fingers can band together and collaborate on the Stay-Warm task.  So this year, as the cold weather set in and as I pulled out my running gear, I decided it really is time to swap my running gloves for running mittens. 

But running is quirky.  The first 20 minutes or so of a winter run is always miserably cold; bundling up and wearing hand protection  at the start of a run is a matter of survival.  But once the run gets underway, about 20 or 30 minutes in, all the muscles in our bodies are cooking and steaming, and my friends and I start unzipping jackets and pulling off our gloves.  Even on the coldest of runs, somehow we all wind up with bare hands by the end.  So what I really want isn't a mitten that's like a winter coat; it's a mitten that's like the set of layers I use on the rest of my body.  My fingers need to be a team, but they can be a team that gets dressed and undressed together, so to speak.

My favorite stores are closed for the season, and summer yard sales really haven't been a great source of running mittens anyway.  So I hunted around on the internet.  I found a set of running mittens on-line that seemed to be almost all that I wanted, except I can't find them used.  Another consideration important to me** is that like many store-bought things, they're pricey.  One pair of these mittens costs as much as my last 5 pairs of running shoes combined --- although admittedly, my last 5 pairs of running shoes combined was only about $25.  Still, $27 for a single pair of mittens is a big deal for me.

[** Nowadays, price is mostly a consideration only because 

I have spent many years identifying as "Miser Mom", 

and by now that identity kind of clings to me.

My husband and I actually have more than enough money for me to "splurge" 

on a pair of gloves, or on chalkboards, or on other even more extravagant things.

But still.  Why spend money for mittens if there are sustainable ways around that?]

Mitten story number three.

In spite of the cost, my cold fingers won the argument, and I splurged.  I ordered a pair of the fancy running mittens from the online store.  And they ended up taking a LONG time to come*** . . . so long, in fact, that I decided to futz around in the sewing room and make myself a pair of running mittens.  

[*** When they did come, I ended up liking them so much, 

I ordered a few more pairs as Christmas gifts for some of 

my friends and family who live in cold-weather areas, 

and those new pairs came within a few days.  

So I think that the company's out-of-stock problems have been fixed.]

It turns out, making mittens is not that hard.  I decided on three layers: two layers of a knit material (essentially, worn-out t-shirts), and one outer layer of a weave that could block the wind.  To make the mittens, I 

• traced my hands on top the material with a a marker,
• cut out the fabric, and 
• stitched it all together.

Ten minutes of hard toil led to this beautiful baby.

The woven fabric, because it doesn't stretch, made it almost impossible to get the mittens on and off, until I realized I could trim that part so that it starts above the wrists, and have the knit part alone on the wrists.  Once I figured that out, the mittens fit me like a glove.  (Well, except that they're mittens.)  I think that tracing, cutting, and sewing took me all of 10 minutes -- certainly faster than doing all of my on-line searching.

These mittens are nice and warm -- so warm, in fact, that I can't wear them for an entire run if the weather rises into the balmy 30's.  So after a few runs where I ended removing and carrying them, I cut slits in the mittens so I could flip them like the bear mittens, and I sewed velcro closures on them.  The slit/velcro adaption means that the mittens curl in toward my palm, which is actually a nice addition.  

Again with the thumb.  Not sure what that's about, really.

I have to say, I'm glad I got  the fancy, expensive mittens number 2, because they're super versatile and very comfy in cool weather that hasn't tipped over into the frigid zone.  But my homemade mittens are even warmer (not to mention cheaper and made from scrap materials), and I am likely to revert to these when temps get into the freezing range.  

And that's the end of my mitten stories.
You're welcome.