Hand in Hand, a Mother-Child Winter Mitten Combo Keeps Hands and Hearts Warm

When you just don’t want to let go of your little one, Kara Taylor can lend a hand. And a mitten.

Well, actually, a mitten inside a mitten.

The Beverly mom is the guiding hand behind Forget Me Knot Mittens, an inventive twist on winter’s traditional hand warmer. With a small wool mitten sewn into the palm of an adult mitten, mother and child literally are knitted together as they walk woolen hand in woolen hand through the cold.

“It’s a very nostalgic, sweet thing to me — holding hands,” Taylor said in a feature for DNAinfo Chicago.

She came up with the idea because she’d often forget her 2-year-old and 4-year-old daughters’ gloves or mittens.

“I cannot count how many times we’d be running to the store and realize we had forgotten to bring the girls’ mittens,” Taylor told the Beverly Review earlier this year. “That’s when it hit me—why not connect their mittens to mine somehow?

“We all know moms don’t lose their mittens.”

The first mitten prototype was designed by a friend, Steffany Joassin.

“I do not knit,” admitted Taylor. “I don’t.”

But she could sketch. And after four versions, Taylor and Joassin settled on a design and some mittens were knitted. Taylor took her daughter shopping on Michigan Avenue while wearing a pair.

“People would stop me every couple of minutes to ask about the mittens,” Taylor said.

After several attempts to find a manufacturer, she finally found someone who made her 500 pairs. Her product arrived just before last winter. She didn’t need to worry about giving them all away as Christmas gifts, either. She sold out in less than three months.

Every package goes out with a note carrying this phrase: “They hold your hands only for a little while, but your heart for a lifetime.”

Taylor has since applied to be on ABC’s entrepreneurial TV showcase, Shark Tank, which showed some interest but cancelled a planned taping.

Taylor said Bloomingdale’s liked her mittens but asked for more colors. So she launched a Kickstarter this fall, raised $3,000, and now makes kelly green, winter red, black and fuchsia in addition to heather gray.

“If I had a penny for every time someone said to me, ‘I would pay you to make them hold my hand again,’ I wouldn’t need the Kickstarter campaign,” she told the Review.

Last month, her mittens were mentioned on SmallFryBlog.com, a children’s lifestyles blog, as one of its “Best Inventions for Kids.”

Forget Me Knot mittens are sold on her website, on Etsy and at a Beverly store, Belle Up Boutique, 1915 W. 103rd St. They retail for $29.95 and $39.95 for a bundle that includes mittens for the free hands.

“They make a really cute gift,” Taylor said.

» company website: ForgetMeKnotMittens.com
» available on Etsy
» follow Forget Me Knot on Facebook

» learn more about how Kara Taylor found a manufacturer for her mittens on DNAinfo Chicago