Two years ago, Vancouver hosted the Winter Olympics and I designed a mitten pattern. I designed it because the Olympic mittens that were all the rage (red, with white rings on the back) and made by The Bay were almost impossible to get and silly-expensive.

So I made up this pattern:

And people liked it. Over nine hundred people liked it and over seven hundred of them downloaded the free pattern. It was a little astonishing, frankly.

Then I more or less forgot about the mitten pattern. People knit variations of it, some with the long format and others with the modification that I made for shorter hands. It was nice to see people use it.

The other day I chanced to poke in and see who had made what with the pattern and spotted this marvellous variation:

I think I like these better than my original pattern. In fact, I fully intend to make myself a pair, with flaps to fold over the fingertips, for cold days of photographic discovery.

So effectively I’m going to make a modification to a modification of a pattern that I made in response to another pattern.

Craft and its makers never cease to amaze me.