Latvian Mittens

This is my favorite pair of mittens. I’ve had them for 15 years, and they have been my constant companion. I’ve repaired them several times, and they are once again in need of fixing.

I bought them on a trip to Helsinki, Finland, in the spring of 1994. At the time, I was an exchange student at the University of Bergen (Universitetet i Bergen) studying Folklore.

During spring break in March, a fellow American and I decided to go to St. Petersburg. We took the train to Oslo, then Stockholm, took a boat to Turku, and on to Helsinki on another train. Our journey was long, but worth it. After a stay in Helsinki, we travelled on to St. Petersburg by train, stopping once to change tracks (as the tracks are different widths on either side of the Finland/Russia border).

While in Helsinki, we visited a small shop that sold hand-knit gloves, hats, scarves, and the like. Unfortunately, I no longer remember the name, but I remember the shop being near the Lutheran Cathedral. I found my mittens there, and at the time, I did not know that the motifs on the mittens were Latvian.

After retuning from my studies in Norway, and while in graduate school at Indiana University, I purchased the book Latvian Mittens by Lizbeth Upitis in 1997. I had become quite an avid knitter by that time, and I kept myself busy through Indiana’s winters knitting big and small projects. While looking through Ms. Upitis’ book, I found a pair of mittens depicted which are almost identical to the ones I purchased in Helsinki: Kurzeme, Liepajas (see picture below). It looks like the knitter who made my mittens omitted a portion of the pattern and used a different cast-on.

In 1997, I also began knitting another pair of mittens in Ms. Upitis’ book: Kurzeme, Susjas (see pictures at the bottom).

As my wonderful mittens have become thread-bare in several places, I have also thought about knitting another pair of them from the instructions in Latvian Mittens. There is a graph for my mittens (109) on page 82. The mittens I bought were knit with cotton or a cotton blend. The colors are vibrant and they have not really pilled at all. I’m thinking to use KnitPicks’ Palette fingering yarn, as they have so many colors, and the yarn is 100% wool and fairly soft. Ms. Upitis recommends using wool yarn. This will be an experiment, but one I look forward to. I’ll post the progress and results as I undertake the project.

Cheers!