The Gloves Are Off...

...the needles! I finished them last night. Thought I'd take advantage of all the sun to take some quick pictures and squeeze in a quick post during my lunch hour, since I had the luxury of starting my work day with a meeting not far from my house.

I re-knit the first glove from the base of thumb up, starting Sunday. The fingers really don't take much time -- the main issues I had concerned fit. I had a really hard time gauging how long to make the fingers. On size 3 needles using sport weight yarn, a row or two can really make the difference between webbed fingers and floppy tips.

As mentioned earlier, I made some modifications, which I'll detail on the gloves' Ravelry project page soon.

I wouldn't hesitate to make gloves again, although my next pair will probably be with fingering (sock) weight yarn. These gloves are really heavy. I wore them around the house last night and my hands almost got too hot. I'd like to try something with stranded knitting for a little variety in color -- I can hear some readers snorting in disbelief already. But I'm very happy with these gloves, especially since they represent branching out into a new garment, but also because I got this awesome yarn at a swap. One knitter's unused stash is another knitter's treasure.

I got them finished just in time to photograph them on my back deck in a short-sleeved shirt and 82-degree weather!

Fixglove

This may look like a pair, but it's not.

The one on the right was finished three weeks ago, the one on the left, last night. As I was knitting these gloves, I learned a few things -- too late for the first glove, but just in the nick of time for the second. Uncharacteristically, I thought I could make some alterations that could make these gloves a little more wearable. Yes -- I actually made changes to a pattern. Two of them were pretty easy, but the other was a little more complicated -- and I figured it out all by myself!

Below is a diagram of what I did:

Starting at the bottom with the green line, I stopped the base of the thumb four rows earlier than the pattern called for. Things were looking just a bit too webby on the right glove, and I thought that this might help. It did! I don't think this is a pattern problem, just a personal anatomy issue. Apparently, I'm an ape.

The red line shows that I started the pinkie finger a few rows before the other fingers. I put the pinkie stitches on a holder and cast on in the gap between the fingers, much like the thumb. Look at your hand -- your pinkie probably starts lower on your hand than the other fingers. You'd think I would have a basic grasp of my own anatomy, but Staci actually pointed this out to me. Some patterns take this into account, others don't. I did misread the pattern (forgot I was going in the opposite direction on the opposite hand), and I cast on 4 instead of 2 stitches between the fingers, but I knit them together when the time came to work that finger. No problems.

The blue line indicates that I knit the fingers just a few rows longer. Again, webbing issues on the first glove. I thought they fit perfectly, but when someone with shorter fingers than I tried them on and noted they were too short (thanks, Stephi) I realized that I'd been deluding myself. This time I paid more attention and added a few rows. A few times I had to tink back after finishing the finger because it was too long or too short, but I think I got each one just right.

Now that I know what I'm doing, I'm hoping I can get the right glove back into shape quickly. I'll have to frog back to the middle of the thumb. I have enough yarn -- it might just be easier to start over.

G-Love

For a long time, I've been obsessed with the idea of gloves. Not as obsessed as MadTV's Dot here, but keen nonetheless. They look awfully complicated -- like socks with toes, but with all the increasing and decreasing in different places. Recently, pattern and yarn plopped themselves in my lap and I got to work.

I'm using a pattern called Men's Heavy Gloves, a 1945 Beehive pattern reprinted in Retro Knits. It calls for DK weight yarn, but I recently fell into some chocolaty Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sport (see previous post), and I thought it might work on bigger needles. So far, things are looking good. The body of the glove has a cool texture that appeals to me.

I did have some problems in the space after the thumb hole is done but before the fingers are started. The instructions read "P1, CO 4 sts, sl next 16..." And my poor feeble brain read CO to mean "Cast off." Of course, this made no sense in context, but I couldn't see that this meant "Cast on" for the longest time. I haven't made that many patterns that cast on in the middle of the work, and it just wouldn't compute. You should have seen the weirdness that resulted. I tried five or six times, not understanding how the mess I was making could become wearable. Finally, it clicked.

Unlike the nice quiet bamboo needles. It's been a long time since I've used dpns, and I'm enjoying it. Just wish I had some slightly shorter ones for the fingers. It's hard to juggle all that wood around 16 little stitches.