The Da Xiong Mao mittens are a fair isle knitting pattern that can be easily called : “the Giant Panda mittens”….cause thats whats the Chinese words actually say.

Through the years i have taken some opportunity’s to watch wildlife wherever i could on the globe. Like whale watching in Iceland, a monkey reservate in Indonesia and many other things. Something fascinates me too see animals in their natural environment and see the true beauty of our world in it. Of course everything the human created to time is a miracle, but have you ever seen the complicity and miracles our nature keeps with all its life in it. And i guess we still haven’t discovered all about it.

Even more it hurts me to watch mankind destroy these things. And we are all guilty of it. We all use plastic and we all have thrown something away along the side of the road. But these are small things. There is also killing elephants for their teeth, killing whales for their body and i could go on and on with lots of examples. But sometimes we forget these things and don’t realize there will come a time lots of species will only be found in a book rather than in real life. And this was something i realized when i visited last summer a new Panda reservate build here in the Netherlands in a zoo. As a country we adopted two giant young panda’s from the reservate in China to give them a safe environment and to maintain and try to let them breed. As the Giant panda is one of the species which numbers are going down and down they are already a protected species.

When i thought about this i immediately came to the idea to create something which could help this problem. I thought the panda would be a good theme to use as it is also the worldwide logo for the nature fund WWF. For us Dutchies we know it as de Wereld Natuur Fonds. This organisation is working and fighting for the ideals i described above.

So i started designing the knitting pattern for the mittens with a panda theme and it actually floated right out of my mind through my hands on the paper. The front sides of both mittens shows two panda’s who will meet each other and the backside holds a paw mark of a panda. The thumb holds a bamboo leaf.

The mitten pattern has a written instruction with photo examples to guide you. You have to work the charts to make them. All is explained in the pattern. However, you need some basic knitting experience to make them and you need to know how to work with two colors of yarn in a fair isle technique. I didn’t explain a full tutorial about this as media like YouTube is full of instruction video’s for it. I always think some images gives a better idea them a thousands words.

The mittens require two balls of sock yarn, 50 grams with 210 meters length. I used Scheepjes Invicta Extra.

Although the mitten pattern is a one-size pattern, i included some information to make them larger or smaller. Just read the pattern. All is tested and measured.

The pattern is written in English.

Finally, the pattern itself. I provide it for free. But….normally i would have put a price on it. Instead of asking a fee for it i would suggest you make a small donation to the WWF. If you have wanted to purchase the pattern it would also have cost you something, so it would be a nice suggestion that instead op paying me, you would now donate it. The links to donation can be found on my blog when you look into the pattern’s post.

Of course i don’t force anyone to give something or do something i wish. I can’t look in your wallet or judge about life circumstances. So i trust you can make this decision for yourself before you download the pattern for free.