Mittens!

Many months ago, Samara and I were in the L&M Hardware store, and realized that they sold pelts. Among the various animal pelts you could buy from local trappers were beaver pelts. We told Ann about it, and joked that it would be funny to make something out of beaver fur.

As Christmas neared, we realized that one of the primary native crafts was the making of mittens out of beaver fur. When we went to the craft bazaar at the school in early December, they had hats and mittens made from beaver fur, as well as seal, wolf, fox and all sorts of other animals that the local native people hunt. The local native craftspeople spend a lot of time working on their crafts, and it shows in the prices. We had thought about simply buying some beaver mittens for Ann for Christmas. The prices, however, started at $150 and went up from there. Nice seal and wolf hats were $600. Not within our price range.

The result is that Ann only just received her Christmas present in the mail. I handcrafted a pair of beaver mittens for her, and it cost much less to do it, even with authentic materials.

I bought a beaver pelt at the L&M store for $79.


Then I bought a small scrap of moose hide as well.


I found a pattern on the internet for a style of mittens called "chopper" mittens. I printed the pattern, and cut out the moose hide for the palms and finger. It is very difficult to sew leather.


You have to use a special needle, called a glover's needle, that has sharp, three-sided point that punches through the leather. It took a long time to sew together the pieces using the reinforced polyester thread.


True authentic mittens would be made with sinew, but I don't think even the natives use it anymore.


The beaver hide was thinner leather, but it was still difficult to sew the palms and backs together with the entire mitten inside-out.


Once they were all finished, I knew they needed a liner.


I bought a fleece pullover at the local thrift store for $1, and used it to make essentially another pair of mittens out of fleece. Then I sewed them in as the liners and sewed the bottom all the around as a cuff. They turned out pretty neat.


I felt like the finished mittens were missing something, though. I only had two native Alaskan animals used so far, and the mittens needed a toggle so that they could be clipped together when they weren't being worn. That's where the caribou jawbone that Olaf gave me came in handy. (If you don't recall or haven't read the whole blog, I picked up a slightly intoxicated man from in front of the AC and gave him a ride home one day a few months ago. In return, he gave me the jawbone of a caribou that was laying around his yard. It seemed a strange gift at the time.) I cut a small piece of bone from the jawbone and filed and polished it into a toggle shape. Then I put a hole through the middle and attached it to the mittens with a moose hide thong.


So that's the finished product. Fleece-lined beaver mittens with moose hide palms and a caribou-jawbone toggle. It's about an authentic a native craft as you can get, I'd say. And all the animal products are by-products of subsistence hunting and trapping. Alaska may be one of the last places in the United States where you can still get away with wearing animal furs without getting red paint thrown on you by PETA, but it seems natural when the hides are harvested by natives and not from fur-farms.


I really hope that Ann enjoys her mittens. She seemed very excited about them (as well as her other Christmas gifts). Samara wants me to make her a pair now. I have some beaver pelt left, but I'm not sure if it's enough for another pair of mittens. I'm also not sure I want to commit to that much work! Did I mention that hand-stitching leather is hard work? I guess we'll see. It does seem only fair that she gets a pair too, since she moved all the way to the frozen northlands with me.