Monday, July 13, 2009

Mittens for Mum

My Mum gets around in a battery-operated wheelchair. She loves the independence and the freedom of being able to leave the rest home where she lives, and take herself down to her favourite cafe for her cappuchino and cake.
She also makes regular excursions to the local supermarket to buy treats for herself and the other residents ( or inmates, as Mum likes to call them !).
She is partially paralysed but can still use her right hand to stop and start her chair, and this hand and the one resting in her lap have certainly noticed the colder temps. that we have been having.

I thought some warm mittens might do the trick, and knitted these with some wool that I bought from a friend who is about to embark on selling kits for mittens and socks using hand dyed possum/merino wool.

The idea with this super fine, very soft yarn is to felt the mittens once they are knitted.

I felted these using a mild wool wash and dunking them in the bathroom basin with hot water and gentle rubbing. I was a little bit cautious because I didn't want them to shrink too much and then not fit...they could probably do with a bit more felting but I will see what Mum thinks.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

She will be the hit of the coffee shop with those beautiful mittens! I love to read interesting things like this about your country. I found a sweater at a thrift shop a few years ago up here in the States that contained New Zealand possum fur.

speckled egg said...

What a lovely blue!