The wooly mittens Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont wore to the Inauguration ceremony of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were knitted by an LGBTQ mom from the Burlington, Vermont area.
After the image of Senator Sanders in those cheery mittens went viral last week, the story behind them has been making the rounds around the media too, from NPR to The Guardian to the Jewish Insider to the lesbian blog Mombian: Sustenance for Lesbian Moms, which reports:
Jen Ellis lives outside Burlington, Vermont “with her partner, Liz, and their kindergarten-age daughter,” reported Jewish Insider yesterday. … Ellis has apparently been flooded with e-mails by people interested in the cozy coverings, but alas, she is not selling them any more. As she said to the Guardian, “I am a second grade teacher, and I’m a mom, and all that keeps me really busy.”
She does give them as gifts, though, creating what she calls “swittens” from old sweaters plus fleece lining made from recycled plastic. In fact, her gifting was the origin of Sen. Sanders’ pair. At the time of the 2016 campaign, Ellis’ daughter was attending a preschool directed by Sanders’ daughter-in-law, Liza Driscoll. Ellis was making mittens for all the teachers, and gave an extra pair to Driscoll to give to Sanders.
Despite the international coverage of her mittens, she related to NPR that her students “thought it was cool,” but “I don’t think that they’ll view me any differently in the end. I still was bundling them up in snow pants and their own mittens and sending them out into the snowy day for recess.”
Clearly she’s staying humble. She told Jewish Insider, “I’ve tried not to let all of the mitten business overshadow the gloriousness of sitting with my five-year-old daughter and my partner and watching the first woman be sworn in as vice president.”
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