Smitten with Bernie’s mittens? Sorry, they’re sold out

The mittens worn by Sen. Bernie Sanders during Wednesday’s inauguration inspired hundreds of memes, a Topps baseball card and a bobblehead. But for people smitten by Bernie’s mittens, here’s some bad news: they are out of stock.

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Jen Ellis, the Vermont second grade teacher behind Sanders’ mittens, said she has been deluged with requests from people wanting to buy a pair, CNN reported.

The mittens were completely sold out as of 7:29 p.m. ET Wednesday -- hours after Sanders wore them to the Capitol.

“Thanks for all the interest in Bernie’s mittens!” Ellis, 42, wrote on Twitter. “I’m so flattered that Bernie wore them to the inauguration. Sadly, I have no more mittens for sale. There are a lot of great crafters on Etsy who make them.”

The brown and cream mittens were made from repurposed wool, NPR reported.

The mittens were also lined with fleece made from plastic water bottles, Ellis wrote in a January 2020 tweet. They originally gained attention when Sanders was running for the Democratic nomination for president during the 2020 campaign, according to The Hill.

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Ellis tweeted at the time that she had received “huge support” for the mittens and used the hashtag #berniesmittens.

Ellis, who lives in Essex Junction -- where Sanders was mayor during the 1980s -- gave the mittens to Sanders in 2016 when she was making presents for her daughter’s preschool teachers, NPR reported. Sanders’ daughter-in-law, Liza Driscoll, owned the preschool, which gave Ellis an opening to deliver a pair to the senator, the website reported.

“I was making mittens for holiday gifts for the preschool teachers,” Ellis told Jewish Insider, “and I made an extra pair for Bernie. I gave them to Liza to give to him, just as a thank you.”

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Ellis confessed that she does not make many of the mittens, which she sold online and at craft fairs.

“I’m flattered that they want them, but there are lots of people on Etsy who sell them and hopefully people will get some business from them,” Ellis told Jewish Insider. “But I’m not going to quit my day job. I am a second grade teacher, and I’m a mom, and all that keeps me really busy.

“There’s no possible way I could make 6,000 pairs of mittens, and every time I go into my email, another several hundred people have emailed me. I hate to disappoint people, but the mittens, they’re one-of-a-kind and they’re unique and sometimes in this world, you just can’t get everything you want.”

Cox Media Group