Mittens for Abby

If you've been reading our blog for some time, then you know that the oldest son and brother in our family has been sick for a long time.  Jared and I traveled to the Mayo Clinic in January and finally got a diagnosis for him.  We thought all would eventually be well, but such has not been the case.  Jared's recovery is taking a long time.

Anyway, Jared had to drop out of school and spends most of his time lying in bed.  He'll be well someday, but it's going to be a while.  Fortunately, Jared has some wonderful friends all over the world that keep in touch with him and keep his spirits up.  We appreciate every one of them.  And then there are the friends that go a bit further.

Abby is one of those friends.  She added Jared to her Netflix account so that Jared can escape his boredom every once in a while.  And the rest of the family gets to watch, too.  We've all been sucked into a few Korean TV shows. Descendants of the Sun is fabulous, in case you were wondering.

So I really wanted to do something for Abby to thank her in some small way for her kindness.  I offered to let her pick out anything from our Etsy shop, or I could make something custom for her.  Abby wanted natural-colored mittens, and she wanted them to be warm but without so much halo.  So I blended gray alpaca with blue angora and then spun it up and knitted the mittens.

I thought they looked kinda blah.  So I asked if Abby wanted some snowflakes on them to jazz them up a bit.  I gave her a couple of options and Jared showed them to her through his laptop camera.  This is the one she chose. 

Maybe if I get lucky she'll send a pic of her wearing them.