Beer Pint Mittens – Why not?

Beer Pint Mittens - Why not?

Because I wanted to keep my designs fresh and challenge myself, I asked my kids (young adults actually) what they would want to see.  Much to my surprise they gave me quite an extensive list of possibilities. Some I expected, but many were amazing things I doubt I ever would have thought of. Beer mittens is one of them. It piqued my curiosity and challenge accepted I started doing research.

First was searching the internet to see what other people had designed for beer mittens.  I had some thoughts but the last thing I want to do is pump out a pattern that has already been done to death. Another surprise, there were very few mitten designs that had beer motifs.  What I did find in pages and pages of seemingly limitless scrolling was knit beer cozies. I thought huh, not something I would have thought of doing but I guess it’s a thing.  Not that I have anything against people who paint themselves blue with beer cans and curly straws on their ballcaps, I’m just more of a pub patron than a King of the Hill beer in the alley during cold weather person. This thought process was good, as meditating on beer reminded me that there are many kinds of beer and many types of beer drinkers.  I decided my audience would be of the pub visiting variety.

The next phase of my research was beer history. I knew beer had a long history and I was not disappointed. The first brewing of beer is believed to go back as far as 8,000 years, even further than the ancient Sumerians. In my head, cue up Disney style animation with cuneiform tablets morphing into stick people threshing wheat and barley, turning into Egyptian hieroglyphs brewing and carrying long lines of jugs to Roman mosaics with people in togas clinking frothy pottery mugs. Medieval times chimes in with tapestries of monks brewing huge barrels as beer becomes a food group. Everyone is now drinking beer as it’s considered safer to drink than water.  In fact, during this time period beer became so important as a cultural and economic staple it became a commercial enterprise with the rise of brewers’ guilds. City governments enacted regulations on measures and quality, with taxation becoming a crucial revenue source. 800 years later and some things haven’t changed.

Very silly AI image

I’m happy to say that beer is still a very important cultural and economic staple.  Although in my early adult days beer was not something I was fond of, that changed when I (reluctantly) went to a beer festival. This was like a wine tasting but with beer – who knew? So here was an opportunity to try all different kinds of beer and if I didn’t like it (and there was a lot I didn’t) you could just spit it out into a bucket and move on. Here I learned that I definitely did not like hops or sours and I loved stouts and porters. Now I’m a huge fan of checking out pubs and breweries, locally or when we travel and trying the literal rainbow of craft brew flavors that are out there. On a fairly recent trip to England and Scotland, I was introduced to cask ales.  My son described them as beer that was flat, but crisp – not very appealing description but quite accurate and very tasty. I think we had more pints in that 2-week tour of UK pubs than I had in the previous year. And lots of chips and delicious meat pies too!

Beer Pint mittens in progress

So my beer mittens needed barley, hops, and a beautiful pint glass with fresh froth. I designed them so that they looked really good in tones of ale and stout brown, and extra long cuffs to keep your hands and wrists toasty if you decided to have that pint outdoors during a chilly Oktoberfest. Because, why not?