Have you ever had one of those projects you think is going to just fly by? Me too. But did you read the heading of this post? Guess again!! Sure I thought it would be challenging, I'm fairly new to knitting and my repertoire so far has only consisted of dishcloths, socks, mittens, hats and a simple rectangular/mobius wrap. Then came the convertible mitten/gloves (insert scary music here). When I couldn't find a pattern using WW yarn that I liked I thought I could improvise - start with a mitten pattern then just add fingers and make mitten tops, sounds so simple...until I got to the fingers then everything just started to collapse into a twisted pile of black spaghetti yarn. First attempt I used US8 needles because that's what the ball band recommended. When I got to the fingers, the stitch count was equal to the size M so I went with that. Now, I've never done anything like fingers on a glove before so this was a challenge but I plowed my way thru and made 8 lovely fingers, WHEW! I tried them on, figuring if they were a little loose on me they'd surely fit my brother....the mitten part fit just the way I'd hoped, the fingers just BARELY fit ME! UGH!! Back to the patterns. When I looked at the size L glove pattern there were WAY too few stitches. So I backed out a few rows and increased 16 stitches over 3 rows. So they were shaped a little weird, they're just gloves...for my brother...for hunting (does it sound like I'm justifying? I AM) Back to the fingers. Now that I'm experience at doing fingers the four on the first glove didn't take too long. I tried it on, nice fit. I held it up to admire my work....oh my! It looked sort of like, how can I put this tactfully, a "Jemima" doll. Do you remember those little flat dolls made out of black fabric with four or five little braids sticking straight up out of her head? (please don't send me "you're a racist" emails/posts, they used to have these when I was a kid and that's what we called them). As much as I wanted to keep justifying, I just couldn't. I have a certain, unwritten standard for my work and these would not do, not even for tramping around in the woods, living in a one room shack for a week with 5 other guys and no shower. It was THAT bad!
So I've had this illness since before New Year's Eve and by the second week of January (week 3 of the mitten/glove calendar) I could no longer look at them. My head was just foggy and I couldn't focus very well on anything, let alone a patternless mitten/glove. So I set them aside and made several hats. Knitting lots of rows, round and round in Stockinette was about all I could handle.
Two weeks later, I thought I would try again. I totally dismantled them down to the cuffs, changed to a US4 needle because they seemed a bit holey while I was taking them apart, and decided to use the
Line By Line Mittens to Gloves pattern from
KnitPicks that I used to make Mom's mittens. Her mittens seemed to come out a bit small even though I was right on gauge, I thought "WW yarn instead of DK and US4 needles instead of US3, I'll take my chances". My husband Allen and Andy seemed to have the same size hands (somebody had the idea at Christmas that they measure them against each other) so I was having him try them on thru every step. And finally, after a month, my brother will have a finished pair of mitten gloves to take hunting.
