It's a New Fingerless Mitts Pattern!

And lots of links worth digging into…

It feels a little late in the season for fingerless mitts. Here in South Carolina, temps are in the mid-70s today. I've been watching robins courting outside my window. Spring has begun it's Now You See Me, Now You Don't dance.

Nevertheless, my Mosaic Mitts pattern has just been published by Farm & Fiber Knits!

Photo courtesy of Long Thread Media

These mitts were knit with Bare Naked Wools Targhee Tango Sport, a pillowy soft 2-ply yarn in the natural colors of the Targhee sheep.

I wanted a panel of mosaic knitting centered on the back of the hand, so I designed these mitts to be knit sideways. You cast on for the length of the mitt at the pinky-finger side of the hand, use short rows to shape the thumb, and graft the knitting into a tube at the end. This is one of those designs that I wasn't sure would work when it only existed in my head. I was tickled to find out this unconventional construction produced a beautifully fitting mitt!

This pattern is available free with a subscription to Farm & Fiber Knits. Not yet a subscriber? Go ahead and sign up for a monthly subscription. At $5.99, it's about what you'd expect to pay just for the Mosaic Mitts pattern. You can cancel anytime, but I'd bet you'll stick around for the newsletter and the other terrific patterns in the FFK library.

I also wrote an article all about Mosaic Knitting to accompany the pattern. You can read it here. It won't surprise you that I love getting geeky about the technical aspects of knitting, so I'm always happy when an editor asks me to write an article to accompany a design!

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In other news, I have a fabulous new book to recommend. It's The Briar Club by Kate Quinn.

This book is built around the residents of Briarwood House, a slightly run-down women's boarding house in early 1950s Washington, DC. The point of view cycles among the different women, so we see each character both through her own eyes and through those of her housemates.

Quinn's brilliance lies in the way she uses these women's individual stories to explore the social upheavals and the role of women in postwar America. From changing expectations around marriage and motherhood and the development of the contraceptive pill, to Soviet deep cover agents embedded in the US and the McCarthy era hysteria around communism and homosexuality, this well-researched book paints a picture of the world as it was at the start of the decade in which I was born.

From our contemporary viewpoint it's hard to believe that, not so long ago, single working women were not expected to maintain their own households and careers. Whether never married or widowed, their only respectable options were to live with family members (often as unpaid household help) or to rent a room in a boarding house where a "kitchenette" consisted of a mini-fridge and a hot plate, and dishes were washed in the communal bathroom off the hall. I look around my home and I'm grateful for how far we've come.

The Briar Club can be classified as historical fiction, since it deals with real events and has cameo appearances by real historical figures, including Joseph McCarthy, John and Jackie Kennedy, and Margaret Chase Smith, the pioneering senator from Maine. But the novel also works as romantic comedy, since each of the women get a hard-earned happy ending.

I listened to The Briar Club as an audiobook. Saskia Maarleveld's narration is excellent. She conveys the nuances of each woman's voice in a way that makes it easy to distinguish among the many characters. And there are scenes in this book that are laugh-out-loud funny.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Briar Club. It was my companion this past weekend as I was needle felting steeks and adding edgings to my latest design commission.

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Some things that caught my eye…

• I was saddened to hear of the death of Roberta Flack this past weekend. Her sultry alto underscored much of my young adulthood. If you'd like to join me in immersing yourself in her soulful vocals, here is the Spotify playlist I'm listening to:

• Austin Kleon, author of Steal Like an Artist, shares his 10 tips for a better life with books here. I heartily agree with all of them.

• Anne Helen Petersen wrote a brilliant essay in Culture Study on what the cuts to federal programs will cost us as a society. Please read this. And if you enjoy Culture Study, I have five 1-month gift subscriptions to give away. They will go to the first 5 subscribers to A Good Yarn who leave a comment on this post which includes Culture Study? Yes, please!

• As I watched this video about the centennial reinstallation of the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, I was reminded of the Trump administration's war on "woke" culture. The effort of the Met to include the stories of all Americans and to expand their representation of women, immigrants, minorities, and enslaved people in their exploration of American culture would have been controversial, to say the least, in the current political climate. In the words of Rachel Maddow, "elections have consequences." We are just beginning to see the consequences of the 2024 presidential election.

• JoAnn, the 80-year-old chain of fabric and craft stores, will be dissolved as a result of their second bankruptcy filing (the first was less than a year ago). Bankruptcy court proceedings led to the sale of JoAnn’s assets to a finacial services company which plans to wind-down operations and conduct going-out-of-business sales at all 800 stores. I don’t know about you, but there are no independent fabric stores near me. My choices now will be to shop online or to go to Hobby Lobby (I can’t support their politics) or Walmart (I can’t support their labor practices). I didn’t buy yarn at JoAnn, but they were my go-to source for fabric, buttons, and trims. What a loss.

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As always, thank you so much for your time, attention, and support.

Continue the conversation: I'm curious to know if you find the variety of links at the end of each week's post valuable. Did you click on any of this week's links? Would you like to see more? Less? Let me know in the comments. And don't forget to comment with Culture Study? Yes, please! if you'd like one of the five gift subscriptions to Culture Study.