For my graduate storytelling class, I decided to do a retelling of Jan Brett's story called The Mitten. The story basically consists of a little boy dropping one of his mittens, which is found by a variety of woodland animals, who all crawl inside it to warm up. When the boy finds the mitten again, it has been all stretched out since everything from a mole to a bear warmed up inside it. The joke at the end is the size diference between the boy's two mittens. I needed a visual aid, and so decided to be creative and cut the animals out of felt. Then I needed a mitten to put them in.
A normal human would have gone to the store and purchased a mitten. I am not normal. I am a knitter. I knit both mittens. I found a simple and straightforward pattern online, and made two mittens. I didn't worry about the gauge at all. I used white Lamb's Pride Bulky and size 9 needles for the big one, then Blue Sky Alpaca Silk in white on size 2 needles for the little one. The pattern was lovely, and very clear. I will have to try it sometime with real mitten yarn.Anyway, it was a lot of work, but a lot of fun. Also, now I have a really nice visual aid should I ever actually become a children's librarian...or I could be nice and give it to my elementary school teaching sister who had The Mitten as a child.
We'll see.
1 comment:
Just watched your story telling blog, and saw how very effective these two mittens were in your story. I loved the reaction of your listeners when you pulled out the smaller mitten!
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