These mittens are designed to echo the recurring motif of a cloud of yellow butterflies surrounding the character of Meme and her lover in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s book One Hundred Years of Solitude.

The back of the mittens features a clouds of rising butterflies, from the distant squall of yellow specks up t the fully fledged butterflies as the butterfly form becomes more and more apparent. The palms of the mittens feature a lattice pattern, on top of which, on the right hand mitten, is a large, detailed butterfly.

In the story Meme takes a lover, a mechanic, in an act of defiance. Her lover is always surrounded by a cloud of yellow butterflies. her lover is injured in a fall when secretly visiting Meme, and from then she becomes the one who is surrounded by the yellow cloud. As her lover is ill the butterflies begin to die, and she knows of the death of her lover when the final butterfly drops away. In the palm of these mittens is that last butterfly, a reminded to hold on o and to treat gently your loves and your passions.

The pattern for these mittens contains high-quality charts and written directions. The thumb is constructed with a thumb gore/gusset for maximum comfort, but it also means that each mitten may be worn on either hand, so if you prefer the larger butterfly on the back of the hand, you can swap and change as your mood takes you.

The mittens are knitted using stranded colourwork and the yarn is not carried across more than 5 stitches at a time, even on the large butterfly motif.