January 2015
I’ve got several pairs on the go at the moment which is perhaps why I feel as though I’m not getting anywhere. But today I darned in all the ends of two pairs and they are ready to be pressed and photographed so I feel that I can show the next pair which are for another friend who lives in Wales.
Ribs with dates and initials
The design inspiration for these is the sea around West Wales where the person they are for spends a lot of time, walking, camping, birdwatching, looking for porpoises and just generally hanging out. She also said that her favourite colours are turquoise and blue. As I have a self imposed rule to only use stash yarn, I have had to choose the closest I have which is a dark blue that is somewhat greenish and a couple of shades of greeny – blue 2 ply used together. However, I am not confident I have enough for the whole gloves so I have introduced a navy for the darker contrast in the thumb section. (Will appear in later pics).
The ribs are two colour stripes rather than two colours in the rib which makes them rather un stretchy and as for the last pair, I wanted a good amount of give here. The little wavy line is another watery reference!
I’m actually up to the fingers now so need to take another picture to catch up. Perhaps tomorrow?
How to do the cuffs? January 2015
I’m starting the second in my group of gloves for my friends who live in Wales. I can now understand the thought processes of ‘traditional’ knitters who knit the same item repeatedly as I knit more of these gloves. It is very easy to just cast on the same number of stitches with the same yarn and needles, and knit the same type of cuff. Many of my gloves have the two colour single rib as on most of the Mary Allen ones.
So now I’m knitting for a larger hand than mine – this friend is over 6 ft tall and her hands are wide, as are her husband’s. His have a double rib with single row stripes and this way you get lots of stretch. The last pair I knitted for a friend, the blue and brown, below, caused comments about the difficulty of getting them on and off with the two colour rib – there is little stretch in it.
The colour effect I want for these is mixed, as my inspiration for this pair is the sea off West Wales with its mixed and shifting colours. So I think I’m going with the coloured striped rib to aim for that effect.
This has made me look at the cuffs on the Sanquhar and Yorkshire gloves; they are usually two coloured, although there are some Sanquhar that have single row stripes on a double rib. But the Scandinavian ones have lace effects, stripes and chevrons in, as can be seen in these here at Nordic Knitting, a site that sells gloves from Estonia.
Knitting gloves 