New projects, new techniques!

Sorry it has been so very long!  This month has gotten out of hand for me!  Weddings and birthdays and job stuff and everything!

So, lets just jump right in!  I have gone a couple of times to knit night, which has been FABULOUS!  Last week I finished up a fingerless glove for my niece, and over the weekend I managed to finish the second one.  I had never done thumb gussets before this.  They turned out alright.  I am trying not to beat myself up over them too much.  I have holes where they connect to the main body of the glove.  I do have some yarn still connected to the piece to sew those up a bit.  I know that it is normal to have some hole between the two, but these are excessive.

These have not been washed or blocked.  I am hoping that that will help some with the curling and the small sizing problems that exist.  I used DK weight superwash wool, so I think they are going to turn out just fine.  Overall I really like the pattern.  I did modify it and only did 7 rows of increases rather than the 9 called for because with 9 rows of increase the end of the gloves that fits around my arm seemed too lose.  So 7 rows did the trick and seems to have worked quite well.  The way she has the increases done - by lifting the bar between stitches, does leave a hole.  I decided I was alright with it because it does add a decorative element to it.  I'm not positive I will use it in the future, though.  We'll have to see.

I did these completely on sharp DPNs.  For that reason they took me a while.  It was less the difficulty of using them rather than the fact that I felt it was quite annoying to use them - if that makes sense.  They also hurt my fingers after a while because I knit so tightly that I sometimes have to work to push the stitches off the needles.  I think I am going to make my next pair using magic loop.

Speaking of magic loop, I randomly decided to try it last night.  I was looking for a nice one-skein pattern and I found one that I have been wanting to make.  But, it called for the same size DPNs that I had used to make the gloves.  I was tired of them so I set the pattern aside.  Then it dawned on me that this was the perfect pattern, because it is few stitches but a long stockinette pattern, to try the magic loop on.  I have only gotten about 2 inches into the pattern, and there is a small learning curve to doing magic loop, but so far the stitching looks uniform and nice and it doesn't hurt my fingers nearly as much!  It is fabulous!  I think I will use this for most of my small circular items in the future - hopefully it will make them go much quicker for me because I don't procrastinate!

The pattern for the fingerless gloves I found pretty soon after I started knitting last fall.  I decided I wanted to make them for my older sister for Christmas.  I started the pattern but I did not finish the first glove until a month ago, when I decided I had to finish these red glove for my niece because she would be visiting from across the country.  So, I might try to do the next glove in this same magic loop, we'll have to see!