In the past, before the popularity of rubber gloves, every fisherman’s wife knit mittens for her husband and experimented with her own design, attempting to produce a warm, durable mitten. Home-made mittens were a necessity. The women were always coming up with new patterns.

The design for these felted knitted mittens is based on an
historic pair of mittens at the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine. The originals were worn by a smelt
fisherman from Winterport, Maine, a town on the Penobscot River, in 1938. They were knit of 100% wool yarn and shrunk down (felted, or fulled) to fit the wearer by washing and drying them several times. Donated to the museum in 1973, they complement other Fisheries artifacts on display, including a wooden smelt scow (large wooden flat-bottomed boat) from
the days of the Penobscot River’s commercial smelt fishery.