Holey gloves, Batman!

Wednesday, Apr. 27, 2005
5:07 PM

I have knitted my very first glove. Why am I knitting gloves at the end of April, you ask? Hell if I know.

Actually, I've been wanting to knit these gloves for a few months (like back when it was still cold enough to wear them) but didn't have either the right yarn or the right size needles. Then I felt silly knitting them when I was just going to put them away for six months. But I needed some kind of handwork project to work on last week when I wasn't feeling well and I just decided what the hell.

The first one has turned out OK, but not stellar. I did a gauge swatch and that was fine, but for some reason the first two fingers were about an inch too long. I ended up ripping back and finishing them at the right length so that's OK. The pinky's a little long but I decided it wasn't worth the hassle to fix it. The ring finger is too fat, but that's my fault for not reading the pattern carefully enough. Why would you decrease one finger when you didn't decrease the others? I can live with that, I guess - I'll just remember to do it on the next one.

I'm really grumpy about the holes between the fingers though. I'm not sure if that's a tension problem or a technique problem, as in I didn't do the backward loop cast-on or pick up the additional stitches correctly. I managed to close them up with waste yarn and woven in ends, but it's very awkward and messy looking. I will see if the second one goes any better in that respect.

The other thing which may or may not be a problem is a sort of seam looking line along the cuff, which is garter stitch done in the round. I don't know how to avoid that line since you have to move the yarn to the front to do the purl rounds. But it doesn't look right to me.

Anyone who can provide clues and/or advice, please do! I'd greatly appreciate it. The pattern is from Weekend Knitting by Melanie Falick. It's a really pretty book, definitely intermediate to advanced, but I think some of the instructions could be clearer. I also found a mistake in the glove pattern, where the tip of the index finger decreases. I don't think there's any way you can have 15 stitches, k2tog all the way around and end up with 12 stitches.

Maybe I'm just in over my head.