Give Those Hands Some Gloves!

 I decided that after 25 years in knitting, it was time to knit gloves and knit them for my kid.

Step one was to trace a hand and take all the appropriate measurements that are needed for a fitted glove.  I then turned to two of my tried and true resources. My two books of reference were Mary Thomas’s Book of Knitting (Dover Press) and an old article from a Threads Magazine book when Threads actually had knitting articles. The good news is that there are still used copies of this book floating around that can be snagged on Amazon. But the book that was the biggest help of all was Ann Budd’s book The Knitter’s Handy Bookof Patterns. This book was invaluable to me. I highly recommend it. 

                                            The Diagram

I would use this diagram with my daughter's hand measurements to plan and to check my knitting as I went along.  The hand length and finger length were the biggies for me.

Glove Notes

·       Taking an accurate gauge is the trick to having gloves that fit (seems to be true about anything in knitting that needs to fit).

·       I worried about having holes between the fingers during the set up row.  I solved this by actually casting on more stitches than I needed.  On the next round I would K2tog as needed to get back to the correct number.  This step solved the problem and is not noticeable. Or at least I don’t think it is. This is just one of many tips that Ann has in her book about knitting gloves. 

There are a lot of free glove patterns out there. Pages and pages can be found on Ralvery alone. I have just lately downloaded a free glove collection from Interweave. They have many “a gratis” eBooks.  

Happy Knitting!

Seeing Purple (for quite a while now)

 

What started out as a small project for my newly adopted Poodle Sophia turned into a two-year marathon for my youngest daughter? 

I vaguely remember how all of this started.  In the beginning, I dyed some of my machine spun Shetland yarn to make a sweater for Sophia.  The people who spun it (some one in Colorado) really did a botched job and I didn’t think the yarn was fit for human use. I dyed the yarn Barbie pink*. In my hurry to dye, I forgot to loosen the factory ties, so ended up with pink yarn with white stripes. Needless to say, Sophia got a sweater out of some different yarn. 

The pink on the left was the original base color.  Using violet over-painting I created  light, medium, and dark yarns to work with.

 

So there it sat, for a few months, my ugly pink yarn with the white stripes.  I must have been bored one day because I got out my foam brush, spray bottle and purple dye** and started painting.  Rachelle saw the yarn and loved it.   When dyed multi hues, the yarn really didn’t look too bad.  The flaws just didn’t glare out at you anymore. I came up with three shades, light, mid-tone, and dark.  This was a good initial decision because over the next several months, I would have to come back and re-dye, re-dye, and re-dye.  In retrospect, this probably was not the best-planed project.  Coming up next, the gloves.   Stay tuned.

* I have been using the same pink dye forever. It is 608 Pink (Primary) from Jacquard. These are the dyes that I first started using.  It is an acid dye, good for protein fibers.  Jacquard is a good dye for beginners. Vinegar is it’s only requirement.  Although, I have changed over to a different brand, I keep this one around.  I just like the color.  Use intensely, it is a great deep red-violet. Used sparingly, it creates perfect ranges of pink.  I love it as an under-base for violet.

** My violet is Sabraset Violet 880. I pretty much use Sabraset exclusively. My opinion is that they are the best when it come to light fastness. They do take a little more work.  Auxiliaries such as citric acid (vinegar can be used, but it takes a lot more the c.a.), salt, sodium acetate, and Albegal SET need to be used with them.  For me, it is worth it.