From the designer:

“A parhelion or “sun dog” is a colored ice halo in the sky to the side of the sun. These mittens reminded me of a parhelion I once saw while visiting Acadia National Park in Maine. The parhelion appeared to be a patch of rainbow colors floating in the sky.”

These mittens are knit in the round using Latvian braids in the cuff and stranded colorwork in the palm, cuff, and thumb. The skein is separated into 2 balls. Both balls are worked at the same time from different places in the color sequence. This gives the color pattern its contrasting and graduated appearance.

This pattern assumes that the knitter is able to knit stranded colorwork in the round. The pattern is 4 pages long including 2 charts, 3 pictures, and instructions on knitting the mittens using 5 double-pointed needles. If you are more comfortable using the magic loop or 2 circular needles, you can easily adapt the pattern to those methods.