Fetching Fingerless Gloves

I finally started and finished a project in the same month (of the same year)!  Hooray!

I knitted a pair of fingerless gloves for a friend as a birthday gift.  She lives in Mass, so she may actually use these when it gets nippy out.

The project is called Fetching from Cheryl Niamath.  I got the pattern from Knitty.com.  Fetching are fingerless gloves that have a few row of cables around the wrist and on the knuckle.

The yarn I decided to use was Sheep(ish) from Vickie Howell for Caron.  I will have to be honest here:  I really do not like this yarn.  For this purpose, it was not the best yarn choice.  While knitting it kept splitting and there is not much of a twist or wind to it, so it was not the best for cables.  Please forgive my photography, I took most of these at night with the flash on.

The color I chose was Gun Metal(ish), which is a very dark gray.  I will admit they have such great colors to choose from, very vivid and saturated.  I knitted the gloves with a size 6.

I needed double pointed needles (dp), a cable hook (the U looking thing), a marker, darning needle and a row counter. 

While I was casting on, the yarn broke.  Ugh!

For dps, you cast on the required number of stitches, then with the other dps, transfer over several stitches, then with the 3rd dp, again.  You should have split up all the stitches so there are about the same number on each dp.  The first round is the most critical, because you must be careful that you do not have the stitches twisted.  If twisted, you will be knitting a Mobius and you don't want that.

I will then knit the gloves in the round.  Dps are good to use when you have a small number of stitches, but need it in the round.  This will have no seams (yea!) and just a few strands to weave in at the end.

In this pic, I am knitting some cables.  They will be around the wrist and arm.  To cable, you take your cable hook and slip 2 sts onto it.  Hold it in the back or the front (depending on which way it is going to twist) and knit the next sts on the main needle.  Then take the cable hook and knit from that hook.  You now have the start of a cable.  Then you knit in pattern (knit the knits and purl the purls) until the cable row again.  Really, it is easy.

Another feature I want to show you is the thumb.  I was instructed to take waste yarn (a different yarn and color than the yarn you are using) and knit with that as the main yarn for 7 sts, then transfer them back to the left needle and knit them again, but dropping the waste yarn and knit with the main yarn again.

You will have something like this, with the waste yarn showing.  I will carefully unstitch the waste yarn, revealing live stitches.  I will immediately place the live stitches onto two double points.

Slowly unstitch each one and place onto the needle.

I will now knit this little opening in the round to make the thumb.

 

I finished by cabling around the knuckle and loosely bound off with a picot bind-off.  It created little bumps along the edge.  These did not come out as fabulous as I had hoped.  I don't know if I can really blame the yarn entirely, though.  Maybe if I adjusted how much I knit after the cable on the knuckle, or if my hands are too small for these gloves.

They have been sent off to my friend.  Hopefully they will fit her better or look better on her.

I'm sure she will be able to use them on the next blustery New England day.  Enjoy!