Mittens

This mitten thing started when I sent The Maker a message asking about scraps. Pretty sure it was sometime in 2022, which I’m also pretty sure was last year. He and I didn’t really know each other. I had admired his work for a while. Maybe we had already sold some bicycle parts back and forth. But maybe that came after. I know and I don’t. Time gets weird as it piles up and evaporates, and I am a partially reliable narrator at best about these and a lot of other things.

My message asked if his work, which includes cutting up wool blankets to make remarkably nice anoraks and jackets for winter expeditions, ever leaves him with leftovers. I was hoping he could give me a piece of fabric just big enough for patching a couple buttonholes and a pocket corner on a plaid wool shirt I’d worn ungently since paying $7 for it at Savers. He sent back something like, “I’ve got a couple garbage bags full. You can have it all if you want it.” I said I did without knowing why. My only use for wool scraps was fixing those small spots on that one shirt, and Ms. LaCount (my wife) and I try hard to minimize our clutter.

I already had a fabric stash that was spilling out of an overstuffed duffel bag. Button-down shirts with ink stains from uncapped pens in chest pockets. Lower legs of cut-off chinos. Other odds and ends. Since a few years before the pandemic I’ve pulled pieces from the stash to rebuild jeans crotches blown out by bicycle commuting, to patch sheets and duvet covers damaged by dogs digging where they shouldn’t, and to do other little mending projects. Nothing clever. Just utilitarian. All by hand, partially because I don’t know how to use a machine very well, and partially because I can hand-stitch while watching TV, which I do a lot, and fixing things helps that time feel less useless.

So when The Maker offered me the scraps I did have a little mending pastime. But I already had way more material than I needed. And we try to avoid clutter. And I could have easily used some of those non-wool scraps to repair the wool shirt. But I accepted two giant bags of literally one man’s trash that was almost guaranteed to take up space, go unused, weigh on me like unread books and wasted opportunity, and eventually have to be dealt with. I don’t know what I was thinking.

Thousands of times since elementary school I’ve had teachers, coaches, bosses, friends, and other people directly ask me — sometimes with exasperation, sometimes with deep kindness I wish I’d have known what to do with, and always with good reason — questions like “Chris, why did you do that?” and “Dude what were you thinking?” There has also been a lot of other non-verbal communication that conveys the same consternation. I get it. I often ask myself the same questions and look at myself the same way. I’ve always done more stuff that’s tough to make sense of than I notice my peers and other people around me doing. Sometimes I know something makes no sense and I just keep doing it because, oh well. Sometimes I realize something doesn’t make sense immediately after I’ve done it, then I do it again. Sometimes I don’t realize I’m doing or have done something that makes no sense until years into or after it. The pattern gets disheartening. I’m forever trying to clean up stacks of regret and embarrassment, based in decisions that make no sense going back to elementary school, that are constantly accumulating, tipping over into chaos, getting rearranged, and encroaching more and more into productive space. Some days those stacks feel like all that exists.

My point in telling you all that is to make sure you have the best possible chance of understanding the weight of what I’m saying when I say that so far, taking those first two garbage bags full of wool-blanket scraps from The Maker has turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life. It has made so much sense. I have no regrets about it. My feelings toward it are almost only good and they keep getting better. I have had very few experiences like that.

I think he dropped the scraps on our front stoop while Ms. LaCount and I were both out or on Zoom meetings. I can’t remember what time of year it was. Both of the black, heavy-duty bags were filled almost up to my waist (I’m 6’2” or so), knotted at the top, and packed so densely that I needed a solid two-handed grip and serious effort to hoist them into the house.

I unknotted each bag on the hardwood floor just inside the front entryway, between the living and dining rooms, and gently dug through the pieces on top. I pulled out scraps ranging in size from a little smaller than a hot pad to almost as big as a baby blanket. The shapes were irregular and random, with sharp angles and swooping curves and long tails. There were shades of solid red, green, blue, and charcoal grey. A lot of olive and taupe military drabs. Some black. Hudson’s Bay and other stripes — on cream, navy, and olive backgrounds — in teal, yellow, red, emerald green, light grey, black, blue so dark it looks black, and orange. Everything was heavy and dense in a few different textures and thicknesses. The Maker washes blankets before using them, so the cozy smell of clean wool laundry drifted up as I dug.

Then I dumped the bags out onto our dining-room table, which is counter height and about 5-feet square. Picked up pieces that overflowed onto the floor. Spread everything out. Found patch material for the plaid shirt right away. Picked through the pile, admiring colors and textures. Held pieces close and inhaled. Felt moved the whole time in ways I haven’t experienced very often. Maybe never. The colors, man. The textures. The fabric was just beautiful to look at and touch. The Maker has given me a bunch of bags of scraps since those first two. The piles of wool still move me. I’m always surprised by how deeply. I can kind of describe it. I can say that the warm, overwhelming feeling in the core of my being while I’m handling the fabric is similar to the ones I get while trying to comprehend autumn golden-hour light. But saying that feels embarrassing and inept. It’s nowhere close to what I wish I knew how to say.

After reloading the bags I took them to the basement, leaned them up against a floor-to-ceiling set of shelves along a wall, then thought about but didn’t touch them until a few days later, when I cleared space and stacked all the pieces neatly, kind of organized by color. For a few months the fabric sat there and I thought about it, sometimes with angst because I felt called to do something with it and had no idea what that something should be, but also with excitement about knowing I would figure it out. That’s another experience — knowing I would figure out what to do — I haven’t had very often. Now and again I’d go stare at the piles while downstairs to do laundry or something. I’d pull out pieces, hold colors next to each other, fold and stack it all in different combinations, build an inventory in my head, and just kind of fiddle around with it all, searching for ideas about how to use it, but not forcing or worrying about anything.

I knew that people with talents and perspectives I don’t have would see possibilities I didn’t. I get frustrated with myself about missing important things that seem obvious to most other people. It can get dark. But in this situation with the stacks of wool scraps, I somehow knew how to notice that familiar self-judgment arising without fearing, fighting, or indulging it. For maybe the first time in my life, I consciously believed that regardless of what someone else’s process would be, I would figure out mine and there would be value and worth in it. That never happens. It has never happened. Matter of fact, during this same time in my life I was still very hard on myself about a lot of other things. But not about the wool scraps. I somehow believed that something would work out. I wanted to make things. Maybe wanted doesn’t do the job in that sentence. Maybe needed does. I needed to make things. I don’t know where that need came from. It may have been around for a while, latent without a medium of expression or belief in myself. I don’t know why the scraps were the catalyst.

There’s a lot I don’t remember about what happened next, including how much time passed before I Googled “simple mitten pattern” and why I did. I’m almost certain I only looked at two or three patterns on Etsy before buying the one I’ve used since then to make many pairs of mittens.

The pattern, which is rated “advanced beginner,” includes friendly instructions, including advice about hand-sewing, for making small, medium, and large versions of very simple mittens. I hadn’t sewn anything from a pattern since making a football-helmet pillow in seventh-grade home-ec class at John Adams Junior High in 1983 or ‘84. I remembered the basics of seam allowance and pinning pieces together and such. I’d been building basic needle-and-thread skills while mending. I wasn’t starting from zero, but the first pair of mittens I made, in size medium, took at least a work-week of evenings and both mornings of a weekend.

I started by printing the pattern, which includes two palm pieces and one top piece for each mitten, on regular 8.5 x 11 paper. After cutting those pattern pieces out I traced two pairs: one on buffalo-plaid wool for the main mittens, and one on gunmetal-grey fleece (from my stash) for the linings. Then I cut out those pieces and sewed up a right and left in wool and did the same in fleece. I cut a couple pieces of half-inch elastic I found in Ms. LaCount’s notions and figured out how to sew that into the wrists of the wool mittens,. The last step was stuffing the fleece linings into the buffalo-plaid main mittens and stitching on some red bias tape to make a cuff that binds the shells and liners together. That part was fiddly. And all the sudden after a week I had a whole pair of mittens.

They looked amateurish but better than I expected. They were also more warm and cozy on an inaugural dog walk than I thought they would be. Before starting I had assumed that if I finished the mittens they would be an earnest little novelty that never got worn — just another thing I tried and cared a lot about, like learning clawhammer banjo or Ojibwemowin, that didn’t really work out and wound up feeling embarrassing. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find myself throwing them into our living-room wood stove, unfinished, out of frustration. But I liked them. I didn’t beat myself up about their flaws. I felt excited about trying new things on a next pair. That state of looking ahead with a sense of possibility and excitement was brand new for me. I’m embarrassed to admit how thrilling and important it felt, so far into life, to make a homely little pair of advanced-beginner mittens. I’m also grateful that’s how it felt and still feels every time I make some.

There was no way I was going to let anyone other than Ms. LaCount see that first pair, but I immediately wanted to make some for other people. That was a conflicting sensation. First of all, who was I to think anyone would want some stupid mittens I made? Imagine that someone you don’t know to be a mitten maker randomly said they had made some they want you to have. Good grief. What if I put someone in the awful socio-emotional position of having to accept a cringey “gift” and then, in ritualistic Midwest politeness, pretend they liked and wanted it? I’ve seen interactions like that irreparably compromise relationships. I bet you have too. Visualizing the act of giving a pair to someone gave me a huge ick. “Uh, yeah, I, uh, like, made these mittens and I was wondering if you might want them.” Come on, man.

And despite all that I was compelled. I had full agency over my decisions and actions, but they were driven by unfamiliar forces. I saw no course other than making more mittens and giving them away. So I made the second pair to give. They were emerald green with a thick black stripe running horizontally across the top. I slightly altered the pattern shape and added a black accent detail that covered some stitching I didn’t want to show. Used black wool for the lining because I’d run out of fleece. Those choices established an intention, which remains, of approaching every pair as an experiment. I must have felt at least OK about them. If I thought they sucked I would not have been able to work up the guts it took to give them.

I made them with a co-worker in mind. She and I had shared a fair amount of vulnerable time and conversation over a few years because of our work co-facilitating dialogue intended to foster positive change among men who had been arrested for using violence against women. While debriefing and just chatting after a Zoom group meeting on a Tuesday morning I told her about my new little mitten hobby, and explained that I had a pair I would like to give her if she wanted them, and that it was totally OK to say no if she didn’t want them. Of course she was kind and supportive. Of course part of me assumed she was being nice out of propriety and pity.

When I handed them to her a few days later I felt sick to my stomach and trembly, and I’m sure my voice shook and I was weird about eye contact. Still, I was willing to go through that, and to put her in a potentially awkward position and risk damaging her perception of me beyond repair, because I was compelled to share what I had made. She was kind. She put the mittens on right away and said they would be perfect for her son’s hockey games, where her hands were always cold. On the way home I felt kind of thrilled and very exposed. Over the next few weeks, after she’d worn them a few times, she said some unprompted positive things about them after Tuesday Zoom groups.

 

Since then I’ve made plus or minus 150 pairs, including 30 I recently tried to sell and 30 or 40 I’ve donated. Every few months The Maker asks if I want more scraps. I always do, and he always refuses payment. As more people learn about my little hobby, I occasionally get asked if I’m interested in gifts of shrunken sweaters or other wool. I always am, as long as I get to reciprocate with mittens if the person wants some. I don’t have to buy much to keep the hobby going. Extra-wide double-fold bias tape in red and black for binding cuffs. (A real sewer would make their own.) Fleece in shades of grey for liners. Half-inch non-roll elastic to keep wrists snug. Coats & Clark Extra Strong Upholstery Thread, mostly in black but also in blue-grey, red, navy, olive, and a couple drabs.

Most people might not notice differences among pairs I made a couple years ago and ones I made this week, but my process and the mittens it produces have improved. I don’t go for speed but I’ve gotten a lot faster. From tracing and cutting all the pieces to finishing the last binding stitch, I can make a pair in about six hours over a couple-three days. If I have to or want to I can make two pairs a week. I’ve almost finished a pair in one sitting, but my sewing posture is terrible and I can only sit on the couch and sew for so long before my shoulders and neck are burning and I need to get up and do something that involves no hunching.

 

Sometimes people know I’m making bespoke pairs for them. Sometimes I just send or show up with a pair. Most of the time I deliver them in brown paper packages tied up with string, with the person’s name written in Sharpie on the paper. Based on my own standards and how positively people have responded to receiving mittens, I mostly trust they aren’t embarrassing. The emotion some people have shown in response to getting a pair has surprised me. At least a couple folks have teared up after unwrapping a package and putting on a pair. Some just soften and kind of dissociate in a warm, cozy way for a moment or two. When someone sends a text or looks me in they eye or at the mittens on their hands and says something nice — “They’re so beautiful.” or “These are seriously the best mittens ever!” — I let myself feel that for a second. I actually prefer not being around when a package gets opened. That leaves more room for folks to have an honest experience. Opening a handmade gift in front of someone who wants you to love it is the worst. No one I’ve given a pair to has said or seemed as if they dislike them, but I keep expecting that to happen. I also assume politeness has prevented at least a few people from showing how they really feel.

Last winter I made a pair for The Maker. On a Saturday afternoon I awkwardly handed them to him, in paper and string, along with a bottle of Maker’s Mark, then tried to get out of his driveway as fast as possible. He’s supportive with likes when I post mitten photos on Instagram (@birchsmoke) and Facebook, but he’s a master sewer and it’s tough to overstate the beauty and function of the stuff he makes. Me giving him some advanced-beginner mittens made from his own scraps could have been pretty embarrassing for us both. I didn’t want to create an obligation for him to politely pretend. And I am compelled. I had to give him a pair. While driving home after handing them over I thought about turning around and telling him to give me back the package, keep the whiskey, forget I’d been there, and please let me know next time he’s got more scraps.

He texted later the same day to say he liked them. That gave me some relief, but part of my brain specializes in explaining away positive messages like that. What else was he going to do? Just say nothing about a gift that obviously meant a lot for me to give? He’s a decent person. He’s from Minnesota. He had to say something nice.

A few days later, on his professional Instagram and Facebook accounts that have thousands of followers, he posted a photo of the mittens along with a caption that includes a line saying the mittens are “well built, elegant, and perfectly suited for their job.” I just about fell apart. I bet I’ve read it a hundred times. It’s one of the three best compliments of my life, so ranked because I trust and believe the intentions behind them. That’s not really a comfortable sensation. Getting a compliment I can’t credibly dismiss and don’t believe I deserve is a confounding privilege. It means accepting possibilities about myself I have no idea what to do with.

The other two:

In about 2011, while a streetwise 20-year-old St. Scholastica student and I were discussing a paper she wrote for a class I was teaching, I said something I don’t recall that prompted her to pause, look me in the eye, and say, “Chris Godsey, you are just a real-ass human being.”

On a Friday evening in maybe 2018, I got a phone call from a guy I had been in grad school with a few years before. He’s maybe a decade older than I am and from a culture that prioritizes important things mine doesn’t. We had been friendly as cohort mates, but not in a call-each-other-to-check-in way. The call lasted about 30 seconds. He asked me how I was, said, “I just wanted to tell you that I think you’ve figured out some really important things about what it means to be a human being,” told me to have a good night, and said goodbye.

I gained some Instagram followers from The Maker’s post. A few asked if I make mittens to sell. My usual response to that question has been to just give the person a pair and suggest donating the amount they would have been comfortable paying to an organization they care about. But this time a persistent guy in Michigan convinced me through a few Instagram messages to sell him some as a gift for his wife. I asked him if 30 bucks seemed fair. He said absolutely not and Venmoed me $50 plus the USPS cost. Over the summer I made a bunch to sell this fall. Most of them were gone within a week. The process felt validating and weird.

Almost immediately after deciding to make mittens to sell, I noticed part of my brain started believing I should save my best material for mittens that will get me money. Moments earlier I would have been excited to give away mittens made from the same fabric. Once I started mentally tallying possible sales, my sense of generosity in a meaningful process — a process I discovered only because of The Maker’s generosity to me — faded a bit. Even though a sincere part of my brain would prefer not trying to sell any more mittens, an equally sincere side says, “My crafty homemade wool mittens are superior to all the others! Many people have told me mine are the best and they are correct! They are too valuable to give away! I should charge more for them. Much more! After all, why not? Why shouldn’t I receive the compensation I deserve for making such beautiful mittens?” I don’t know what I’ll actually do.

Very often, sometimes right after someone says something nice about mittens I’ve posted on social media or tells me they love a pair I’ve given them, or as I’m feeling the fun and confidence and sense of purpose I get from every part of the mitten process, one of the darker stories in my head tells me to remember that none of it matters. Tells me it’s actually embarrassing and sad but pretty on-brand for a soft, immature, 54-year-old dipshit of a “man” who hasn’t achieved or amounted to anything to finally figure out how to do something right and instead of a thing that’s useful or admirable or cool it’s … mittens. Mittens. Of course it’s something like mittens. And not even very good ones. Just ones that people say they like because they don’t want to be mean. The story’s narrator is cruel and certain. It might contain grains of truth. While hearing it I feel small and ashamed and I think a lot about quitting. Just stopping the whole little mitten thing.

But so far, every time the story that says mittens don’t matter starts, the belief that I experienced a couple years ago while pondering wool scraps in the basement — the one that says regardless of what everyone else’s process has been, there is value and worth in mine — provides a tiny bit of golden-hour light. I don’t quit. I might take a day or two off from mittens, let the dark story tell itself for a bit, and watch it pass.

I also listen without grasping for a competing story that usually shows up. Its narrator is kind and uninterested in benevolent gaslighting. It says that while it is true that almost anyone could make their version of mittens from the same pattern and materials I use, and while making mittens can only do and be so much, people who get the ones I make might respond with the emotions they do because there are things in my mittens that are unique and unknown to me. It’s possible that even though I make the mittens, I might not see and feel things in them that a lot of other people do. And those things might have value I miss because I so often get stuck in that other story. The mittens might be pretty good.

There is so much I can’t and don’t know how to change. About how my brain works and why. About time. But when The Maker gave me two big bags full of scraps, I saw and made good on an opportunity to make useful things that leave at least some people feeling as warm and happy and moved as I feel when I make them. I can make something. I can do that. There is so much I can’t go back and do over or just do. But I can make mittens. That’s something.

If you have or wind up with a pair of mittens I have made, whether you paid for them or got them as a gift, you should know they are made with love. Also with longing, remorse, embarrassment, something like joy, heartbreak, elation, purpose, presence, enough gratitude I feel like I might choke on it sometimes, and a lot of other complicated emotions. And so much love.