Fingerless Gloves For Me
It's such a relief to have that huge sock project behind me!! Over the month it took to finish, the temperatures have dropped dramatically And I find, once again, my hands are cold and I don't have any gloves suitable for the not-quite-30-below temperatures. I DO have 30-below gloves. They're overkill for right now though and a nuisance for driving. However, when it's 30-below you wear them!!
A while back I downloaded "Kyla", a fingerless glove pattern from Smokin' Hot Needles (thanks for sharing Monika!!) and even selected the yarn and wound it into a center pull ball. And then I learned to spin and it all sort of sat forgotten in a basket for a looooong time. Since then I have discovered the wind impermeability of a certain heavy green suede jacket, which I now wear all the time in this weather. This means, of course, the peach/cream/orange yarn I had originally selected for these gloves was no longer such a good choice! LOL!!
Ah, there's nothing I like better than the opportunity to take a dive into the stash!! It really IS a mix of pain and pleasure though! Pure luxuriant pleasure in the panoramic colors and textures, even if they aren't suitable for the current project! Pain, of course, over all the projects I had in mind for so many of the beautiful yarns! Ah! the quiet contentment in actually finding the 'perfect' yarn! Not sure if it's latent memory or optimism, believing that the 'perfect' yarn could be found in that volumous collection, but find it I did!
It's a skein of hand-dyed sock yarn from (would you believe?) Wild Geese Fibers, my favoritedrug dealer, I mean "yarn supplier" LOL!! I couldn't believe my eyes!! What are the odds of finding a stash yarn the exact same color as my jacket??
OK, so the photo isn't exact colorwise but you can see the resemblance. Funny, because of the colors I think the ball looks a lot like a big round hay bale, like the ones you see in the fields in late summer.
In my usual, nonconformist fashion, this yarn is a slightly heavier gauge than Monika's pattern calls for so I swatched and cast on fewer stitches. I decided I didn't want to knit the bobble cuff either. Bobbles just don't do it for me. But at the same time I didn't want a plain rib cuff. I remember reading how to make a picot edge cuff and thought I'd give it a try.
I started both cuffs at once on 2.5mm 4" DPNs - one from the inside of the ball, one from the outside of the ball. I used a provisional cast-on using a crocheted chain of waste yarn (a little trick I learned how to do properly from watching the Knitting Daily DVDs).
The whole picot edge thing seemed pretty straightforward. Knit 6 rows in the round, then K1, K2 tog, yarn over, all the way around, then 6 more rounds of knit. Then fold the knitting in half, picking up the live stitches from the provisional cast on, knit them together with the stitches already on the needle.
What could be easier, eh? Actually, doing the provisional cast-on was pretty fiddly, and took a long time, especially with sock-weight yarn. Picking up the live stitches was even fiddlier because I had the stitches on the crochet chain backwards. They were in the back loops alright, but pulling out the crochet chain would have started undoing from the end of my knitting, not from the beginning, d'oh! So I had to pick up the live stitches with the waste yarn still in place. Pretty squished up and tight! sigh! Anyways, I finally got the first cuff folded and finished - voila!
Doesn't it look like a picot edging to you? No? Me neither! Somehow it just doesn't look quite like I pictured it.... maybe I shouldn't have made them 3-stitch. If I had made them only 2-stitch (K2 tog, YO) maybe they would be more pronounced... No matter, I'm not ripping them out! No way! - not after all that! Besides, the YO's make the edge kind of stretchy. Having a thick edged cuff is what I had in mind so I could tug all I want and it will endure! In a little while, I had two cuffs..... and so it goes.....
A while back I downloaded "Kyla", a fingerless glove pattern from Smokin' Hot Needles (thanks for sharing Monika!!) and even selected the yarn and wound it into a center pull ball. And then I learned to spin and it all sort of sat forgotten in a basket for a looooong time. Since then I have discovered the wind impermeability of a certain heavy green suede jacket, which I now wear all the time in this weather. This means, of course, the peach/cream/orange yarn I had originally selected for these gloves was no longer such a good choice! LOL!!
Ah, there's nothing I like better than the opportunity to take a dive into the stash!! It really IS a mix of pain and pleasure though! Pure luxuriant pleasure in the panoramic colors and textures, even if they aren't suitable for the current project! Pain, of course, over all the projects I had in mind for so many of the beautiful yarns! Ah! the quiet contentment in actually finding the 'perfect' yarn! Not sure if it's latent memory or optimism, believing that the 'perfect' yarn could be found in that volumous collection, but find it I did!
It's a skein of hand-dyed sock yarn from (would you believe?) Wild Geese Fibers, my favorite
OK, so the photo isn't exact colorwise but you can see the resemblance. Funny, because of the colors I think the ball looks a lot like a big round hay bale, like the ones you see in the fields in late summer.
In my usual, nonconformist fashion, this yarn is a slightly heavier gauge than Monika's pattern calls for so I swatched and cast on fewer stitches. I decided I didn't want to knit the bobble cuff either. Bobbles just don't do it for me. But at the same time I didn't want a plain rib cuff. I remember reading how to make a picot edge cuff and thought I'd give it a try.
I started both cuffs at once on 2.5mm 4" DPNs - one from the inside of the ball, one from the outside of the ball. I used a provisional cast-on using a crocheted chain of waste yarn (a little trick I learned how to do properly from watching the Knitting Daily DVDs).
The whole picot edge thing seemed pretty straightforward. Knit 6 rows in the round, then K1, K2 tog, yarn over, all the way around, then 6 more rounds of knit. Then fold the knitting in half, picking up the live stitches from the provisional cast on, knit them together with the stitches already on the needle.
What could be easier, eh? Actually, doing the provisional cast-on was pretty fiddly, and took a long time, especially with sock-weight yarn. Picking up the live stitches was even fiddlier because I had the stitches on the crochet chain backwards. They were in the back loops alright, but pulling out the crochet chain would have started undoing from the end of my knitting, not from the beginning, d'oh! So I had to pick up the live stitches with the waste yarn still in place. Pretty squished up and tight! sigh! Anyways, I finally got the first cuff folded and finished - voila!
Doesn't it look like a picot edging to you? No? Me neither! Somehow it just doesn't look quite like I pictured it.... maybe I shouldn't have made them 3-stitch. If I had made them only 2-stitch (K2 tog, YO) maybe they would be more pronounced... No matter, I'm not ripping them out! No way! - not after all that! Besides, the YO's make the edge kind of stretchy. Having a thick edged cuff is what I had in mind so I could tug all I want and it will endure! In a little while, I had two cuffs..... and so it goes.....
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