On Knitting New Mittens:

The boredom of knitting the same mittens over and over again with only the size and color changing was starting to get to me. Creative Knitting magazine came to my rescue with a series of animal hand puppets in their March issue.

The pattern in the magazine fit’s a larger child or woman’s hand. With little more than a change to a smaller needle size, I have started to make puppet/mittens in children’s sizes for the Women’s and Children’s Shelter in town. Of course I have to make two of each animal to make a pair of mittens out of it but it is working so far.

The only other change I’m doing is that I’m not using buttons for the eyes so they don’t get caught on things. And I think the embroidered eyes look fine.

I needed a bit of a boost to keep on track with my commitment for the Kevin’s Mittens Charity. Not that I’m off track but I could feel it coming if I didn’t do anything about it. I’ll throw in a fancy pair of mittens every once in a while to keep it interesting too. But I needed this puppet thing to have something more usable to donate in the warmer months of the year.

There are two free puppet patterns of the mouse and pig on line, under the Web Bonus tab of the page. But the elephant, frog, lion and puppy are in the magazine. And I think I’ll add a kitty cat of my own design into the mix too. What do you think of a dark gray cat with yellow eyes?