Fingerless mittens with an extended cuff knitted flat and hand knitted in the round.

The design of these fingerless mittens was inspired by the bookshelves in the library in which I work. It’s utterly unfair to pigeonhole libraries as just being about books: librarians today are constantly working to get information in all its forms, not just books, to the people that need it. But that doesn’t mean that historic books and manuscripts aren’t still important (and pretty), too.

The alternating blocks of mistake rib on the cuff of these snug and cosy fingerless mittens resemble books arranged on shelves, from the biggest at the bottom to the smallest at the top.

‘Classmark’ is the local name for the number each book has on its spine which identifies it on the shelves. You might know that as a ‘shelf number’, a ‘call number, a ‘Dewey number’, a ‘shelfmark’, a ‘pressmark’, or something different again!

(from pattern introduction)