In this House of Two Gables

There is something so very Dickensian about fingerless mitts. I feel like I should be hawking little knitted things for children on the streets of London, dropping my “h”s, and calling people “guv-nah.” Or, perhaps fast forward 40 years or so and I can be Eliza Doolittle dancing on a damp London street about “warm face, warm ‘ands, warm feet” being “luv-er-ly.”

But I should stick to my own continent, I suppose. In this house, when the heat pump is on, I wear my fingerless mitts just to read. But it must be something appropriate to the fashion, because you just know you’d never survive in the House of Seven Gables without the proper knitwear. (Don’t you just love the name Hepzibah? This is probably why God saw fit to give me only sons because I would so want to give my daughter the name Hepzibah, though what I would call her, I don’t know. Hep? Bah? Hepsy?)

I took a sabbatical from Evening Breeze to knit these up. They must be very quick for me to finish them in the same season I started them. But, then, I was highly motivated.

Heat pumps are energy efficient and I am grateful for the heat pump and the house it serves. I cannot say that loud enough to be sure the gods of fate hear me. I AM GRATEFUL FOR MY HOME AND ITS HEAT PUMP, DO YOU HEAR ME? NO NEED TO SMITE ME FOR LACK OF GRATITUDE.

But, between you and me, heat pumps will never make you toasty warm. And my extremities tend to be in a state of frostiness anyway. I can spend all my time sitting next to the fireplace (eating gruel or something. Isn’t that what you do when you sit next to a fireplace?), which would only work if the washer was right there also and all the dust and dog hair only accumulated there and I could cook there. But they don’t so I don’t. And so, the fingerless mitts.

Fortunately they are only needed when the temperature is above freezing. When the temperature outside dips below freezing, the imp in our heating system gets chilly and says, “Heck with this – I’m turning on the heat.” Then the real heater kicks on.

Let me reiterate that I am in no way complaining about this system. Nor am I complaining about cold weather because I love the extremes of each and every season and would go insane if I didn’t experience them. (I remember visiting a friend in Florida one January and, gazing out the window, we noted this one tiny tree with a red leaf on it. “Look,” she said. “The leaves are changing!” More like ‘the leaf is changing,’ but I digress.)

I considered embellishing the mitts with embroidery, but somehow that would be too much gilding for something with such Puritanical New England practicality.

Editor's Note: I just realized that, by some twist of fate, at this moment, all my nails are the same length and looking pretty good. Let's enjoy this rare occurrence, shall we? The mitts also make it look like my fingers start way below where the mitts stop, making my stubby hands look almost normal. So you'll understand if you see me wearing fingerless mitts in the dead of summer.