FO: Evenstar Fingerless Gloves

So, I should be working right now, but it’s almost lunch and it’s Monday and my brain is fried. Last night was a long night of untangling some yarn and some thoughts, and today I’m playing an unfortunate catch-up game with consciousness. So blogging it is =)

One of my last catch-up FOs are these awesome fingerless gloves, made to help a friend stay a bit warmer in her freezing apartment.

Pattern: Evenstar Fingerless Gloves (Ravelry link here – if you haven’t joined, you should!)

Needles: US4 Boye DPNs (pattern calls for 3, but since my friend and I are healthy sized humans, I went up a size)

Yarn: Good old Caron Simply Soft, in Dark Country Blue. I love this yarn because it’s wonderfully soft, easy to work with, and fabulously cheap. I have enough left over after the pair of gloves to make probably another singular glove and still have a bit left over.

This pattern is great, and really clearly written. However, remember me saying that I’m a literal pattern reader? Yup, still had to make some modifications to give my brain an easier time finishing these puppies. I realized when I had to take out the first glove twice that (well, the first time was to realize I needed to go up a needle size, then because of pattern difficulties). The original pattern is written with the main cable pattern written out, and then additional notes on what stitches to add to needle one and then what to distribute among the other two DPNs – which you need to change up a bit as you switch from the initial ribbing to the main cable pattern (MC). This was not working for my brain, and I couldn’t remember which rounds to also remember to cable on the other two needles (small cables also trail up the underside of the arm, until you get to the palm area). So I did a minor modification. I changed the pattern to read what to do for needle one, meaning I added a P2 to each side of each row of the MC instructions; then I starred each main cable row that also had to be cabled on needles 2 & 3. Simple, easy, and helped the gloves just fly by.

This was also my first experience with Elizabeth Zimmerman’s thumb trick, and I think it turned out pretty well. There was plenty of room in the thumb, even for those of us with bigger hands. The only thing I might change is to add maybe one more stitch along the palm side of the thumb. On one glove I ended up with a bit of a hole, because of the yarn being a bit more stretchy there – a lot of tension gets put on one picked up stitch. When I was weaving in yarn ends I went back to that pseudo hole and did a bit of reinforcing, and I’m really glad I did. In the finished glove there’s no sign of a hole, and in the long run the gloves should wear better.