Mittens.

Glorious, glorious mittens. They really aren't given enough credit -- for some reason, people feel an absurd need to migrate from mittens to gloves once they hit puberty. I won't make the obvious joke about the circumstances in which the latter might come in handier than the former.

Mittens are usually composed of yarn, carefully knitted by a grandparent. They are quick to make and utilitarian. They are worn on the hands, and have only two slots: one for the fingers and one for the thumb. This makes flexibility an issue, but they keep you very warm.

They're also much snazzier than gloves, tending to come in more festive colours. It's alright to have odd combinations of colours on mittens, but with gloves you're pretty much limited to grey, black, brown and white. What's the point?

Mittens also immediately increase the cuteness of any girl who is spotted wearing them, particularly if she's also got one of those ski caps that tie below the chin. Especially if the knot hasn't been tied on those lengths of yarn. You can witness this by renting a romantic comedy set in the winter. The female lead will eventually don a pair of mittens and have minor troubles with menial tasks which require the male lead to chuckle and lend a hand.

That's all besides the point, though. I, like so many others, forsook mittens in favour of gloves and am now bereft of mittens and disenchanted with gloves. A fabulous symbol of childhood lost, I think.

Mostly they're cool and they didn't really have a node and now they do.