Two Pairs of Mitts, Part 2: Ellika's Mitts

"Iddie, I need a new pair of mitts," said Ellika to her ladies maid.

"You have two dozen already, miss," Iddie murmured in reply as she moved through the dressing room.

"Oh, none of them suit! Haven't you seen the new fashion? Despie Sandopint came back from Ouve with it and has started a rage. I could just pinch her!"

"I'm sure you'll overtake her again, miss," smiled Iddie, holding a dress out for Ellika's approval.

"No, I wore green yesterday. Perhaps the pale gold silk? --I intend to overtake her, Iddie, I always do."

"What is the style, if I may enquire, not having seen Lady Despilla?"

Ellika plopped onto the apricot satin pouf in the center of the room. "The rustic! There's a new painter in Ouve who's taken the city by storm, he paints his subjects always as if they were field hands--or--or--farmer's daughters--or shepherdesses! All very romantic and sweet! I've already sent for him. He's inspired this fashion--windblown curls, simple fabrics, no bustles or hoops, hardly any ornamentation--no jewels! Just a ribbon round the neck! He painted Despie while she was there! And her most effective dress looks homespun, if you can picture it!"

"Homespun, miss? And no jewels? I cannot imagine this fad will continue long."

"Oh, it's not real homespun, it's just cleverly made to look like it. But Naister is laying on the real thing for me--the finest cornflower blue wool jacquard from a weaver only she employs, she showed me a sample. Just homespun enough! But I need a pair of mitts to match it, and quickly. Oh, I wish I were a better knitter!"

"There are hundreds if not thousands of knitters in the city you might contract with," said Iddie, pulling out a wheat-colored silk.

"That's the one, thank you, Iddie," said Ellika. She stood and slipped out of her wrapper, consigning it to her maid. She continued chattering as Iddie guided her into the dress and began fastening it up. "No, I can't use a knitter here, everyone I would use might get used by someone else, and they all knit the same sorts of things, don't they? Fetch me my amber set--oh, no, see if you can find a ribbon!"

Iddie returned with the ribbon box, and set them one by one against Ellika's white neck. "No...no..."

They came to a black velvet; Ellika stood fingering it, contemplating. "That won't do at all, miss," said Iddie.

"No," answered her mistress, "but I know now who can knit my mitts! Oh, bother, we'll have to call in the ribbon merchant for help--none of these work--fetch me my amber after all!"

After a morning receiving many friends and a luncheon spent with even more of them, Ellika sat down to her little gilt desk and pulled a fine cream-colored paper to her. She dipped her pen and wrote out the following, in a lavishly embellished hand:

She folded this little note, closed it with blue wax and her personal sigil, and sent it off in assurance that she'd have her mitts within two weeks, possibly less.

Nurse received this typical letter from her favorite poppet with some confusion. "'Indiff'rent correspondent.' You scamp, you're no correspondent at all," she chuckled indulgently. "I'd have no idear how you were if your sister didn't write. Now." She re-read Ellika's instructions again and frowned. "Just like I wear?" She peered dubiously down at her knobbed old hands, shielded from the cold by a prim set of black mitts. "I shouldn't like to see black on Miss Elly, but if that's the fashion..."

Nurse sighed, and took off her spectacles, letting them dangle on their ribbon. Then, she got out of her comfortable old chair with a creak. "Ah, Miss Elly, you little clotheshorse." She crossed her cozy sitting room, carpet slippers noiseless on the thick Inchari rug, filed the letter away in her little writing desk, and shuffled back to the warmth of the fire, settling herself under a lap robe with her knitting basket atop it.

She rummaged through it until she found a ball of black yarn at the bottom. She'd rejected it initially; she'd taken pity on the widow of a relative and had bought a year's worth of her wool spinning to use in articles for her sister's babies--and their babies, now, too. Most of the wool had been perfectly spun and dyed, as good as store-bought, thought Nurse. But this one ball had dyed unevenly. Nurse had thought of knitting it into a soaker, but there wasn't enough of it. "Well, it's what you'd call 'rustic,' I suppose--t'was certainly spun and dyed by a rustic, that's sure! And it's as rustic as ever I'd send Miss Elly."

Nurse plucked through the little chest of drawers on which sat her lamp; inside were her sample patterns. On went the spectacles. She peered at the thin strips of knitting, considering what Ellika might like. "Simple, she wants. No frills. She has to have some sort of frill, she'll never wear them otherwise no matter what she says. Here's a simple one! Just used it to edge baby Janna's little petticoat, didn't I?" She put the samples away, pulled out her set of steel needles, and cast on 150 stitches. "And the mitts themselves, just a little eyelet pattern. Pretty little stretchy eyelets, plainer than she likes but she did say simple."

Her plans well in hand, Nurse applied herself in earnest, the needles flying so quickly they grew warm with friction.

Ellika received Nurse's package, with a long, newsy letter, a little over a week later. She set the letter aside, tore off the brown paper, and shook open the box inside.

Out fell a simple but elegant pair of black mitts, daintily ruffled.

"Oh, no!" cried Ellika. "Black? What in Amma's name was she thinking? I didn't say black! I can't wear black!" She pulled them on anyway; they were beautifully knitted, delicate, elegant, understated and exactly what she did not want. "And the dye's uneven!" she cried.

"They're lovely, though, miss, don't you think?" said Iddie.

"No, I do not think!" Ellika tossed the brown paper and the box into the fire, then pulled off the unfortunate mitts. "Bother! And I was so clear in my instructions!" She burst into tears.

"Yes, miss," murmured Iddie, taking the mitts from her mistress's hand. "Shall I bring some tea? I'll bring some tea."

Iddie put the offenders into the pocket of her voluminous gray skirts and glided noiselessly down the back staircase to the kitchens. Once in the tea pantry, she selected a tray and set Ellika's favorite tea things on it, piling extra sugar cubes in the bowl and adding a plate of delicate pale biscuits with pink icing. Her slender fingers pulled a pinch of lavender and more generous ones of chamomile and oatstraw from the tins lining one shelf. Not a tea so much as a tisane, but the gentle ladies maid knew how to calm her charge in these occasional outbursts of emotion.

Just as she made to return upstairs, the new downstairs maid came down the servants' staircase, pulling a large, soft cap over her curly hair. On her hands were a charmingly rough-spun pair of mitts, creamy as the lamb they came from, in the simplest of ribbings that could still be called a pattern. "Tell Mr Affton if he asks that I'm walkin into town," she called to the little knot of servants polishing silver.

"What for?" asked one of the maids.

"Just a look round," she smiled. "It's all still new and int'restin!"

"One moment, please," said Iddie. The girl turned, eyes wide and friendly. "Would you come with me for a moment, please? Back into the tea pantry?"

The girl looked around her, as if she thought Iddie were asking someone else, but followed when it became clear the personal attendant to the Princess Ellika meant her. "Yes, miss?" she hesitated.

"I am Miss Clommert, Princess Ellika's maid."

"I know who you are, miss," said the girl.

"What is your name, please?"

"Arta Dannikson, miss."

"Well, Dannikson," smiled Iddie, "how attached are you to your mitts?"

"My mitts?" Arta hid them behind her back and blushed. "Oh--they're nothing to look at, miss."

"On the contrary, they're exactly what I'm looking for."

Arta brought her hands back and stared at them. "They are? My sister spun the yarn, she's only eight, and that explains the rough spinnin...I knit them myself, they're nothin fancy... Well, miss, I'd just give them to you, but truthfully, I have no money for another pair. I need them," she said anxiously. Iddie reached into her pocket and pulled out the rejected mitts; Arta gasped. "Oh, miss, why would you want these things when you've got such lovely elegant ones?"

"Do you like them?"

"Oh, yes, miss, who wouldn't?"

"And you don't mind that they're black?"

"Mind? Why, no, miss! Black is very refined." She blushed again, fearing she'd overstepped.

Iddie gave her the most calm, reassuring smile in her wide arsenal of calm, reassuring smiles, and said, "They're yours if you'll give me the ones you've got on. You see, Princess Ellika has been looking for a pair just like yours."

Arta promptly pulled them off and handed them over to Iddie. "If the Princess wants 'em, miss, I make them a gift."

"Fair is fair, Dannikson," said Iddie. She tucked the creamy mitts, still warm from Dannikson's little hands, into her pocket, and gave the girl the unwanted black ones.

Arta pulled them on, delight radiating from her in warm waves; she danced in place, admiring her hands, until she remembered she was in the presence of a senior servant--not even a servant, really, but the personal attendant of the Princess! "I don't know why the Princess would want 'em, miss, but thank you oh, so much! They're the prettiest I've ever seen!" If she marked the uneven dye, she didn't say so to Iddie, carried away by the whole effect of the dainty ruffles at her wrist.

"Go along on your walk now, dear," said Iddie. Arta dropped a quick curtsey, dashed out of the tea pantry and from thence out the mudroom door.

Iddie laid the mitts on the tea tray next to the dish of biscuits, carried the tray upstairs, and set out the things on the tea table. She found Ellika staring morosely into the fire. "Read your letter and have a cup of something hot, miss, you'll feel better," encouraged Iddie, putting the letter atop the mitts.

"I suppose so," Ellika sighed, slumping to her chair and picking up the letter as Iddie poured her a cup. "I do want news of Mama and Temmy, after all. Chamomile? Really, Iddie, I'm not all to pieces," she sniffed, then stopped at the sight of the mitts. "Iddie! You darling--where on earth did you find them!" Iddie recounted her clever swap. "Dannikson? Little curly-headed thing, downstairs maid? How charming!" Ellika crowed, pulling on the mitts. "Spun by an innocent shepherdess and knit by her sister! Perfect! Absolutely perfect! Oh, Despie will turn green when she sees me!"

"Yes, miss, I'm sure she will," said Iddie. "I'll be in the dressing room, laying out your evening attire."

Ellika murmured absently and moved her eyes now and again from Nurse's homey letter to the mitts on her hands. She would have to remember little Dannikson. Clever girl.

The Pattern for Ellika's Mitts

Materials:
1 skein Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in Charcoal
Set of 5 size 1 DPNs, or your favorite in-the-round method, size to make gauge
Waste yarn

Gauge: 21 sts/2 inch in k1p1 ribbing

Dinner Bell Pattern:
Rows 1-3: *k7 p3; repeat from *.
Row 4: *k2, sl2 k1 p2sso, k2, p3; repeat from *.
Rows 5-7: *k5, p3; repeat from *.
Row 8: *k1, sl2 k1 p2sso, k1, p3; repeat from *.
Rows 9-11: *k3, p3; repeat from *.
Row 12: *sl 2 k1 p2sso, p3; repeat from *.
Rows 13-16: *k1, p3; repeat from *.

Cellular Stitch Pattern:
Rows 1 and 3: Knit.
Row 2: *K2 tog, yo, k1; repeat from *.
Row 4: *yo, k1, k2tog; repeat from *.

Notes: Both of the stitch patterns are from Barbara Walker’s Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns. There is no thumb gusset, though there is a thumb. Cellular Stitch is nice and stretchy, so these should fit a wide variety of hands. (To size up or down, just remember that you must cast on 10 sts for every 4 sts you want remaining once you’ve worked the Dinner Bell ruffle. For instance: 60/4 = 15 * 10 = 150 sts. Yay math! If you work the pattern as given, you don’t need to worry about any of that.)

Directions:
CO 150 sts, work in Dinner Bell patt for 14 rows: 60 sts. Needle distribution for dinner bell (10 st repeat): 40/40/40/30 Trust me, you should do this.

Keeping the K sts of the Dinner Bell as Ks, k1p1 rib for 12 rows.

Redivide your needles into multiples of 3--15 on each works fine.
Work in Cellular Stitch for 3 inches or until you reach your thumb comfortably (I try these on as I go, just leave ‘em on the needles). Work to the end of a round.

Set aside thumb stitches: Place next 12 sts on a piece of waste yarn; work across the rest of the row, forming a tube of 48 sts. Work for 1/2 inch more, or until you reach your pinkie knuckle.

Work 12 rows of k1p1 ribbing; bind off loosely.

Work the thumb: Take the 12 reserved sts off the waste yarn onto two needles, half on one, half on the other. PU 4 sts along the back. Work in k1p1 ribbing for 4 rows, bind off loosely.

Weave in the ends. Make another one. Admire your little goth paws.