(A Tale of Two) Fingerless Gloves

It seems as if I'm knitting everything twice these days. First, the Colonnade Shawl which I knit and then frogged and knit again (and will frog yet again, but more on that in a future post).

Then, a pair of fingerless gloves which I've been working on for a friend.

First, a little background. My friend Roderick suffers from Raynaud's Syndrome in his fingers. It's basically a circulation problem that causes one's extremities to get very very cold at the slightest provocation (like walking past a freezer in a grocery store). I have it in my feet, so I can completely relate. He was telling me about his hands one day, giving me a demo by putting his chilly white fingers against my neck. Ok, I get it -- you have cold hands. I said, "What you need is a pair of fingerless gloves." I pulled from my coat pocket my pair of fingerless gloves -- made with bright pink Ewa's Sockenwolle -- and suggested he try them out. He loved them and wouldn't take them off -- and this was at a wine and cheese reception after a seminar! He was amazed that his hands warmed up within minutes.

Seriously, I think these things changed his life.

So I told him to hang onto those, and that all he had to do was find someone he knew who knit and ask nicely to get a custom made pair. Hmm. Now who could that be?

Roderick is from Aberdeen, Scotland, which you would know from his accent, his crusty persona (he is a man of No Bullshit), and his occasional donning of The Kilt. (By the way, a man in a kilt is very, very alluring. And not simply because there is Nothing Underneath, but that doesn't hurt.)

Rather than have him go out and buy yarn, I thought I'd make his gloves out of some of my Shetland stash, inspired because of the Scotland connection. I also thought I could customize them further by adding a thistle motif to the thumb. It took me a while to figure out just how the design should look:


So far so good, right? Well, but how does one incorporate a color pattern in just one area of a piece that is otherwise knit in the round? It's trickier than you think. Basically, you knit two rows of the colorwork (back and forth/knit and purl) while slipping all other stitches and then knitting them on the second round. It's brilliantly explained here. Once you get the hang of it, it's not that difficult to do, but you have to keep track of all the stitches you've knit vs. the ones you've slipped:


So here's how it looks. Or rather, looked:


And a close-up, showing the thumb. I chose the goldish color thinking Roderick could wear these inside; close to skin color, they wouldn't be too obtrusive. But here you can see that the colors are not contrasty enough:


So I had no choice but to frog it:


I began again with the darker peat color, salvaging what I could from the original cuff:


Simpler. Different, not necessarily better but a different colorway. You can also see here how I've made the index finger longer than is typical for fingerless gloves. That's because Roderick's index fingers get particularly cold, so I thought I give him a bit more coverage there. Isn't great to be able to customize?

Here's the finished pair:


And a single one. I've also funneled the finger tops by casting off very loosely, because he didn't like how tight the fingers were on the Ewa's gloves.


And a not great picture of the thumb:


Fingerless gloves made from Shetland wool with a thistle motif for my Scottish friend. He loves them.

And it's nice to know I've done something that's made somebody's life better. That's the power of knitting.