A Tale of handspun gloves
Here I am about to report on a project I finished over like a hundred thousand years ago and am just mentioning it for the first time now. Sorry about that. Sometimes life gets in the way of reporting on the crafty things. Though I really don't let it get in the way of the crafts if I can help it.
There's been a lot going on in the past couple of months chez mumbles. I decided to move (and moved) for the first time in 5 years. I'm still in Montreal. Still in the Plateau too. But even a short distance move takes a lot of work when done in a short amount of time. Especially as work is busy as usual AND I went to NYC and New Jersey with a small group of friends for Easter. But everything's moved. My roommate and I are still unpacking, organizing and somehow managing to relax, settle in and play video games on her Xbox (the only part of our entertainment area that has been set up is the Xbox and TV).
Alright so back to the gloves alreadies! A million years ago when I first started knit blogging, I made these Endpaper Mittens. But as I was not in the fashion of actually ever checking my gauge, they never fit very well. They were way too big and I would end up tucking the fingers of one hand into the giant gapping opening at the top of the other hand and vice versa. Finally after seeing some yummy handspun fingerless gloves on Ravelry earlier in the spring, I decided that it was finally time to do something about this fingerless glove business. So I grabbed one of my favourite handspun yarns that I've spun (and apparently never blogged) and got to work.
I found a couple of patterns, printed them out, made a gauge swatch and was starting to adapt the numbers when I realised that mittens and gloves are the garment I have knit the most in my life. I used to make my own mitts when I was a kid and just learning, adapting little kids' mitten patterns that my mom had to fit my hands and even adapted them to work in the round once I learned how the 4 needle thing worked. So what was I doing following and modifying a pattern when I could just make one up that would fit properly?
So I worked out some numbers and got to knitting. I took lots of notes along the way to remember what I had done on glove n°1 when it came time to knit glove n°2. I also have rather narrow wrists compared to my forearm or hand measurements, and thus ended up doing some wrist decreases (same idea as waist decreases) so they wouldn't be all baggy and gross when I wore them.
The other that bothered me about that first pair of mittens was that there was one big opening for all the fingers instead of having each finger in a separate compartment. This makes for chilly fingers/hands. Thus, these new awesome mitts were going to have individual fingers. I know it's more work, but I tend to put in the extra effort. Especially if it will increase my enjoyment of the final product.
I am super happy with how the fingerless mitts/gloves turned out. As you can see, they are more of a fraternal pair than matching. And I prefer the colours in glove n°2 compared to glove n°1. Each glove was worked from a different end of the yarn ball. I ended up deciding that I'd rather not knit a third glove. Already after living with them for over a month, I'm totally used to them not matching.
I have been toying with the idea of writing up the pattern for these mitt/gloves. But there are so many patterns out there and they are kind of simple (well in my mind anyways) that I'm not sure the world really needs one more pattern for such a garment. Is this something that people would be interested in? I'm still not really sure.
Oh and as you can see there was a substantial part of the skein leftover after making these gloves. I ended up making a cute beret out of it and STILL had yarn leftover. But I'll leave that for another post.
I'll do my best to make sure it won't be a month from now. There IS this kind of ominous mountain of boxes in my apartment right were the epic crafting space should be...
There's been a lot going on in the past couple of months chez mumbles. I decided to move (and moved) for the first time in 5 years. I'm still in Montreal. Still in the Plateau too. But even a short distance move takes a lot of work when done in a short amount of time. Especially as work is busy as usual AND I went to NYC and New Jersey with a small group of friends for Easter. But everything's moved. My roommate and I are still unpacking, organizing and somehow managing to relax, settle in and play video games on her Xbox (the only part of our entertainment area that has been set up is the Xbox and TV).
Alright so back to the gloves alreadies! A million years ago when I first started knit blogging, I made these Endpaper Mittens. But as I was not in the fashion of actually ever checking my gauge, they never fit very well. They were way too big and I would end up tucking the fingers of one hand into the giant gapping opening at the top of the other hand and vice versa. Finally after seeing some yummy handspun fingerless gloves on Ravelry earlier in the spring, I decided that it was finally time to do something about this fingerless glove business. So I grabbed one of my favourite handspun yarns that I've spun (and apparently never blogged) and got to work.
I found a couple of patterns, printed them out, made a gauge swatch and was starting to adapt the numbers when I realised that mittens and gloves are the garment I have knit the most in my life. I used to make my own mitts when I was a kid and just learning, adapting little kids' mitten patterns that my mom had to fit my hands and even adapted them to work in the round once I learned how the 4 needle thing worked. So what was I doing following and modifying a pattern when I could just make one up that would fit properly?
So I worked out some numbers and got to knitting. I took lots of notes along the way to remember what I had done on glove n°1 when it came time to knit glove n°2. I also have rather narrow wrists compared to my forearm or hand measurements, and thus ended up doing some wrist decreases (same idea as waist decreases) so they wouldn't be all baggy and gross when I wore them.
The other that bothered me about that first pair of mittens was that there was one big opening for all the fingers instead of having each finger in a separate compartment. This makes for chilly fingers/hands. Thus, these new awesome mitts were going to have individual fingers. I know it's more work, but I tend to put in the extra effort. Especially if it will increase my enjoyment of the final product.
I am super happy with how the fingerless mitts/gloves turned out. As you can see, they are more of a fraternal pair than matching. And I prefer the colours in glove n°2 compared to glove n°1. Each glove was worked from a different end of the yarn ball. I ended up deciding that I'd rather not knit a third glove. Already after living with them for over a month, I'm totally used to them not matching.
I have been toying with the idea of writing up the pattern for these mitt/gloves. But there are so many patterns out there and they are kind of simple (well in my mind anyways) that I'm not sure the world really needs one more pattern for such a garment. Is this something that people would be interested in? I'm still not really sure.
Oh and as you can see there was a substantial part of the skein leftover after making these gloves. I ended up making a cute beret out of it and STILL had yarn leftover. But I'll leave that for another post.
I'll do my best to make sure it won't be a month from now. There IS this kind of ominous mountain of boxes in my apartment right were the epic crafting space should be...
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