In Which the Pirate’s Gloves are Done.

These gloves were a quick fun project. I started out using Sarkasmo’s Gnomittens pattern, but had to make a few adjustments. I saw that she had taken a lot of inspiration from Knitty’s Cigar‘s sizing notes, so I went there for the body of the gloves, and back to Gnomittens for the flip-top section, and I figured out how to do the thumb caps on my own.

I had to modify the pattern a bit to fit my hands and fingers, which are long in proportion to the width of my hands. My wrists are narrow too, so I started with 32 stitches and made extra long ribbed cuffs, then increased up to the medium size of the Cigar pattern, adding rows where appropriate for length and making notes so that the second glove would match the first. Of course this made the second glove go a lot faster than the first, since I wasn’t constantly stopping to try them on and take measurements.

When I started, I had no idea how to make the thumb caps. After making two mitten tops, I had the general concept down. The hardest part turned out to be getting the caps evenly matched on each thumb, and even that wasn’t so hard after all! They may not be 100% perfectly matched, but they’re close enough that I can’t tell the difference when I’m wearing them. With the tops on, the gloves are really warm! I am looking forward to testing them outside next week at the Stew Cook-Off. That’ll be the real test.

The mitten tops seem to stay well along the backs of my hands. If I find that they’re getting in the way, I can add a little loop to the top and a button to the cuff to hold them back, but for now I think I’m going to leave them as they are. I wonder how many people will ask me to make them a pair? When that happens I feel all warm and fuzzy inside! Anyway, things like this are why I took up knitting. There is no way I’d ever find a pair of gloves like this, perfectly my size, in a store.