My designs are inspired by my Scandinavian heritage, and I love how symbolic Norwegian patterns are. I was thrilled when Patricia Ann Fortune ask me to collaborate with her on this Immigrant Mitten. She had the vision of a Selbu mitten that would tell the story of Immigration. She had the idea to use a Selbu Star to represent Norway, and an 5-pointed star to represent America. She wanted one mitten have the Selbu Star at the bottom and the 5-pointed star at the top to represent immigration to America. For the Other Mitten, she wanted and American 5-pointed star at the bottom and a Selbu star at the top to represent immigration to Norway. On top of that she hoped to have a compass and waves. She invited me to design this mitten. I included all that she had asked for and in addition to that, I added the North Star to represent navigation, people to represent the immigrants, both men and women . Note:The people can be changed to represent your story. I put both men and women on my mitten, because my grandpa and his parents and most of his siblings immigrated from Norway to America. If you just have one ancestor that immigrated, you can use all men or all women or which ever combination tells your story. I included the year of my grandfather’s immigration. Also in the mitten, there are flowers to represent home, love and family and love of both countries (old and new) A square to represent the four corners of the earth and more stars that combine to make a sea of flowers. A house for home. Flowers to represent blooming where you are planted, and a compass for finding their way to their new home.
I hope that this mitten will help you remember your immigrant ancestors and remind you of their story, which is really your story.

Sizes
Women’s small-medium Women’s medium to large Men’s small to medium

Yarn
It was really important to us to use Norwegian wool for this project. I used one skein each of Rauma Finullgarn. For the background I used white 401 and the contrasting color I used black 436. I love this mitten in traditional white and black. A pair of mittens used approximately 133 meters of white and 105 meters of black.

Gauge
35 stitches = 10 cm for a women’s small
32 stitches = 10 cm for a women’s medium
30 stitches = 10 cm for a women’s large or a men’s small/medium

Needles
DPNs needed to obtain gauge.
2.0 mm for 35 stitches per 10 cm
2.5 for 32 stitches per 10 cm
3.0 mm for 30 stitches per 10 cm
Make sure you swatch with two colors in the round.

The Immigrant Mitten has traditional Selbu mitten construction with a gusset for the thumb.

I have included my family’s Julekake recipe. I hope you enjoy it.

I would love to see your story in wool. Please post on Ravelry or on Instagram and use the hashtags #theimmigrantmitten #scandiwork

Happy knitting!

Skills

Long-tail cast on
Knitting in the round with dpns, flexiflips or magic loop
(I prefer dpns or flexiflips)
Knit
Purl
Stranded color work
Chart reading
Catching floats
Increases (backward loop)
Decreases (ssk and k2tog)
gusset
Picking up stitches for the thumb