I come from a long line of women who wear mittens, rather than gloves (though the genealogy has not been positively confirmed). Surprisingly this is not a congenital issue but something that develops over time. The underlying cause may be inherited but the catalyst varies for each of us. We were all born completely normal. Something happened as we reached adulthood and became involved in work or hobbies that needed care and attention.
My great-great-aunt, Matilda Mitten was the first recorded with this syndrome. From a modern perspective, we would say she was probably autistic. She was obsessively neat but seemed almost immune to pain. One day she was working with her embroidery frame, sewing the tiniest, finest petit point. Somehow she managed to sew her fingers to the underside of her fabric. She admired the top side and realised that it would take many hours to unpick the stitches and do it again. Because she really didn't feel much pain, she decided to just snip the threads between the fabric and her fingers. The frame came free but her fingers remained stitched to each other. That didn't seem to be a real problem and she decided to leave it. However, her gloves no longer fitted so she designed and knitted what we now call mittens, named in her honour.
Bella the Book Binder was my great-grandmother's mother-in-law's foster child. That seems a fairly tenuous hereditary link but, like the others, she became a fully fledged mitten wearing ancestor. In those days the book binder was responsible for the finished product. She was given a thick text, an expensive cover and a very strong adhesive that was designed to hold the cover in place for many years. Unlike Matilda, Bella was not neat or particularly pernickety. With a particularly large and cumbersome book one day, she slopped glue onto the outside of the cover. Committed to finishing the task, she steadfastly held the cover tight as the glue set. When she finally removed her hand, most of the leather came with it. The palm of her hand was one big square of maroon leather. No matter what she did, the leather stuck with her. She sliced between the fingers to allow for some movement but the bulk of the fabric meant she could no longer fit into her gloves, For the many months that it took for that layer of skin and expensive material to grow out, she became and remained a wearer of mittens.
A sadder case was that of Maudie the Machinist, known more for her stoicism than her co-ordination. Maudie was employed in a factory making parachutes during the war. One fateful day as Maud fed the voluminous silk fabric through the automated machines, two of her fingers were run over by her machine. As she struggled to free herself, she was being pulled inexorably towards the next machine. There was nothing she could do but call for the supervisor. A quick snip from a bolt cutter, her hand was free, her severed fingers moving on through the process - with perhaps an unwelcome shock for some poor airman in the near future. Meanwhile, to staunch the bleed, she pressed the two remaining fingers into the bleeding sockets and bound them tightly. When she finally had the courage to remove the bandages and check her handiwork, she found that the two fingers had fused into the ravages of the lost fingers. Instead of the two digits she expected to see, she had a thumb accompanied by two arcs of finger. Mittens were the easiest solution!
Enter the next generation, me. I have managed to survive more than seven decades of ineptitude. My fingers have been cut, stitched and stapled innumerable times. Unlike some of my esteemed ancestors, I was born clumsy - but obviously fairly inventive, to have survived so long. Let me tell you about my recent confrontation with a tube of Super Glue. I was busily decorating a hat for the upcoming rally where the welcome dinner will have a Crazy Hat theme. While I was in Queanbean, my creative and practical host, Michelle, did the hand sewing on my creation. Without spoiling the surprise and tipping off the judges, all I had to do was add the eyes. A good dob of glue, set the google eyes in place, then hold them somehow till the glue dried. I couldn't quite reach them with pegs, the hat was too bulky to have a weight put on it so, you guessed it, I held them in place. Without going into all the gory details, I have to admit that I have followed in the family fingerprints and become a card -carrying member of the family Mitten Society.
