Spice Up a Basic Knitted Hand Covering with Norwegian Embroidery

Knitting is wonderful, and embroidery is wonderful, but a knitted piece with lavish embroidery is simply sublime. Master crafters, the Norwegians know how to make utilitarian necessities into wearable art. In this companion article, Spin Off magazine editor Kate Larson gave us a fascinating glimpse into the history and evolution of Norwegian embroidered hand coverings and needlework.

In it, we learned that embellishments were not only decorative, but they also made use of small scraps of fiber and added just a little more warmth—valuable ideas for us to add to our gloves and mittens today. Now you can utilize these decorative and functional elements as you make your own pair of embroidered gloves. Current PieceWork magazine subscribers can log in to access more information and the downloadable pattern PDF at the bottom of this post.

Since mittens are likely to be subject to wear and tear, I suggest working with a relatively sturdy knitting yarn with a size of 14 WPI (wraps per inch). Yarns ranging from a heavy fingering yarn to a light DK (double knitting) weight, are suggested to get the recommended gauge.