Comments gratefully received

A reader at the Shetland Archives has spotted the following sentence in a letter written from Yell in November 1869. Has anyone heard the phrase ‘good wet mitten of hand’?

I presume it simply means that they got wet finishing the work. Any comments gratefully received.

‘We have had a down lay of Snow for 8 days now but I am glad to tell you we are done with our Harvest work about the time it began so therefore thats a good wet mitten of hand for us, but some of our neighbors will require a week or more yet to finish theirs.’

Brian Smith
Shetland Museum and Archives
brian@shetland-archives.org.uk