Show and Tell

by Kelly

Work continues on learning how to knit gloves. It's a pretty uphill struggle, as far as I'm concerned. Oh, I completed my first glove, all right...

but I'm not happy with it. The gauge seems too loose to keep hands warm in a Midwest winter, and the fingers are waaayy up on top of the palm, so it doesn't seem proportional. I searched for other free glove patterns, so I could do a comparison glove, but most of them are knit in sock yarn. I do have two skeins of sock yarn that I acquired somewhere along the way, but I don't think I could match the gauge required. I mean, I have to drop four needle sizes to knit most patterns with worsted, so I would be knitting with size 000 needles or something.

Speaking of gauge, I knit that tiny purple hat as a quick test to see if my gauge calculations are at all accurate. The hat came out spot on, so I guess whoever came up with the glove pattern thinks of gloves only as fashion accessories, rather than functional winter wear.

If I can find another free glove pattern, I'll try that with worsted weight yarn - otherwise I'll knit the Patons glove with two strands of yarn, and see if that helps.

I would try thrumming, if I happened to have any wool roving lying around. And I don't think that even Donna's almost mystical yarn stash, which multiplies on its own when no one is watching, has any wool roving in it. Oh well.

Cool Weather

by Kelly

After all the searing heat of summer, it's a little shocking how cool it is here now. So cool, in fact, that a picturesque picnic is out of the question.

But now that the leaves are off the trees, it is easier to see the sunrise:

 

Oh, and if you're curious to know about the hat from the Friday post, well, it went so well (except being a bit too big, since I made a mistake in my gauge calculations) that I made another one.

And by the way, if you're ever short of a model for your hats, and have no round fruits or vegetables or willing pets to put them on, try stuffing them with plastic grocery bags.

The pattern is, of course, a free one, which I found at AllFreeKnitting.

I'm now casting on for a pair of matching gloves for the smaller hat. Yes, gloves, not mittens. I've calculated gauge and altered all the numbers, and I've read the pattern over to make sure I understand what has to happen. It seems simple enough...