Sunday, January 21, 2007

yes!

finally! the "fetching" fingerless gloves from knitty.com are done! whew!

this project, which was heralded as a quick weekend knit took me about three months to complete. granted there were the holidays and the knitting flurry that surrounds it. coupled with a case of DPN phobia, which prompted adapting the pattern for two circulars.

which, on the whole, was really no problem. i learned dividing the stitches evenly between the two circulars did not work as it does in socks. the stitches knit better if divided by pattern repeats. the pattern stitch was a 5 stitch repeat so i had 20 stitches on one needle and 25 on the other. which worked really smoothly.

my only hiccup was the thumb. i could not figure out how to pick up the stitches from the waste yarn and then pick up the additional stitches needed on the two circulars. so i went down to the LYS, borrowed a pair of DPN's in the size i needed, picked up and knitted all the stitches on DPN's for the pick up round only. then i switched the stitches to two circulars and zipped through the thumb to the end. et voila! ce finis!

the other interesting thing i learned was that i knit inside out when knitting in the round. i had observed this before but thought nothing of it until someone at the LYS noticed it and promptly turned my sock right side out, at least to her. i was totally lost. i found when the pattern said knit, in order to keep the stitch patten going, i had to purl, and vice versa. so, when i came to my first thumb, i suddenly realized the stitch pattern was not matching, even though it said to knit and i was knitting. so i un-knit down to the p/u row and purled, which matched the stitch. except for the p/u row, which i had p/u and knit when i should have p/u and purled. so around the base of my left thumb is a ring of purl stitches. a little something to remind me to pay attention. which i did on the right hand where i p/u and knitted the thumb stitches inside out, at least to me, and the thumb turned out perfect.




and the gloves are great. they are warm, comfortable, pretty and practical as i am wearing them as i type. and i am really glad something is finished! yay!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congratulations on finishing - they look great!

I started off knitting in the round the wrong way round too - but it was on a 1x1 rib so it didn't matter. It's about where you have the working needles - they should be closest to you, with the rest of the project away from you.

David T. Macknet said...

Ahh. And here I am, backwards as well. I somehow don't think I'm going to change how I work with it, though.

Anonymous said...

Lovely Fetchings and reading how you did them mirrored my own experience (except for the inside-out-upside-down thingy). But they look great. Gave away the only pair I owned to visiting family member. How could I say no? So after knitting multiple pairs, they are again on my project list!