They’re done!

The gloves are finally finished, ends woven in and all.

It feels like it’s been a long time since I had a finished object to post about, it’s mostly been ideas and abandoned projects and life getting in the way. But this one feels good and I think it may carry a little momentum too.

 

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Tis the season to be jolly…

Christmas is stressing me out. I want to enjoy it, but what with a new house that is still fairly chaotic, school and preschool end of term activities and the quite-frankly-ridiculous amount of time I’m spending driving to and from schools, Christmas could really do with being postponed by a month or so.

It certainly didn’t help a couple of evenings ago, when I pulled out my gradually gathered pile of presents to assess before making a start in the wrapping marathon, only to find it woefully lacking. Given the amount of time and thought I know I’ve put in, not to mention the number of times I’ve been shopping already, I was distressed to say the least. (More shops have now been trawled and more online orders placed.)

So, when Pickle unexpectedly came down with a bug yesterday and then I started feeling ill myself, I took to bed with a certain degree of relish. Hubby insisted I rest in order to stave off any repeat of the disastrous Christmas of 2014, during which we were all struck down by a hideous bug and ended up feeding the in-laws cheese sandwiches instead of the promised Christmas dinner and then packing them off home again.

So, being fortunately not as ill as I could be, but resting in bed nonetheless, I have finally had a chance to work on the gloves that have been on the needles since last winter. Hubby wanted fingerless gloves but since the prospect of working individual fingers was the root of my procrastination, I convinced him that fingerless mitts would be just as good and look where we’re at now!

 

I used Jeny Staiman’s Interlock Bind off which looks great and feels comfortable and I like much more than her JSSBO which I’ve tried before.

Just the thumbs to go and then hubby at least might get something for Christmas!

Leftovers

The leftover yarn from my sister’s scarf was bugging me. I couldn’t do much with it til my sister had tried on the scarf and decided whether she liked it or not, so I took it up to my folks with me when we all went to stay after Christmas. Once the scarf had received the appropriate seal of approval, I decided that the leftovers were destined to be a matching pair of fingerless gloves.

I’ve never knitted a pair of gloves before, but I figured after socks, how hard can it be? I divided the yarn carefully in half and set to. I wanted to incorporate the cable design from the scarf, but on my first attempt, I ran out of yarn just after reaching the thumb hole placement. My second attempt was done in simple stockinette and got a little further up the fingers, but didn’t leave me with enough to create the thumb. Back to square one!

My solution was to raid my mum’s yarn stash (I don’t think she’s knitted for years!) in search of a complimentary colour. She came up trumps with some chunky Robin Picasso in a pinky red colour which went beautifully with the Marble Chunky.

So, here’s the third and final version.

I desperately tried to cast on two at a time in the round, but utterly failed, so had to do them separately. There must be a good tutorial for doing so out there somewhere – anyone got a recommendation? I think they ended up being a pretty good match though, aside from the colour variation in the Marble.

The thumb hole was a new technique for me, but I managed it with the help of this lovely little thumb trick. I picked up a couple of extra stitches to make sure there were no holes and it worked beautifully!

After sewing all the ends in, I had just enough yarn to crochet a couple of flowers to go on the backs of the gloves, but I ran out of time to sew them on, so I left it for my sister to choose whether to do so or not. All in all, I was very pleased with how they turned out, and pleased to have used up all of the yarn. I think my sister likes them, so I hope she wears them. If not I may just have to steal them back from her!