Fingerless frenzy

I saw these Clouldburst fingerless gloves and I loved them. I figured these will work great for anyone on the West Coast and their milder climate. I had lovely Lion Brand's Touch of Alpaca yarn that and I got to work. I used my 2.5mm flexi needles and had to cast on 36 stitches for a nice fit. This meant slightly adjusting the pattern. Knitting went smoothly and quickly, nothing special to report here. Soon I had a pair of fingerless gloves. 

I loved the longer fit on both the fingers and the wrist. But I didn't think this pattern was as visible on my yarn of choice as it was on the original. So why not try another pattern? 

I wanted something similar with a vertical column of maybe cables and I remembered Purl Soho's Soft as a Cloud Cowl and decided to incorporate the mock cables into my design. 

I cast on 36, meaning 18 stitches for each front and back of the glove. I wanted two columns of mock cables on the back of the glove. So after 10 rows of ribbing, here was the pattern with cable portion highlighted: 

R1: k3, p2, k3, p2, k3, p2, k3

R2: same as R1

R3: k3, p2, slip1-k2-psso, p2, slip1-k2-psso, p2, k3

R4: k3, p2, k1, y0, k1, p2, k1, y0, k1, p2, k3

I placed the thumb after 4 repeats of the pattern, so 12 rows. That meant on the 18 "palm" stitches, I did one row of k1, m1, k1, m1, knit the rest and second row of all knit until I had 13 stitches between my make-1s. I separated the thumb, added one stitch in the middle (this is important or you'll end up with 17 "palm" stitches) and carried on. Gloves are easy to try on, so I continued until desired length. 5 rows of ribbing at the end and voila!

Well, that was too much fun. I sent a picture to Amanda and she loved it. She walks her dog, she surely needs fingerless gloves. And definitely with owls. I had some mystery turquoise and some sparkly grey yarn. 36 stitches seemed to be just the right size, but this time I wanted a shorter wrist. So here was my go at it. 

10 rows of ribbing, 2 knit rows of blue, 3 knit rows of alternating blue and grey, 2 knit rows of grey. Then we start thumb increases (with one knit row between each increase row for 13 total thumb stitches, same as in the cable gloves above) and the owl pattern. Once past the owl, I reversed the start: 2 rows of knit grey, 3 rows of alternating blue and grey, 2 rows of blue and 5 rows of ribbing. 

For the thumb, after the separation, I did 5 rows of blue and 5 rows of ribbing. Don't forget to add that one pesky extra stitch after separating the thumb to get back to the 18 stitches on the inside of the glove.  

The owl pattern spans 21 rows and is over 10 stitches, so each owl row starts and ends with k4 on the "out" side of the glove as I was working over 36=18*2 stitches.  

The owl pattern (as per Kweenbee): 

p1, k8, p1

p1, C4F, C4B, p1

p1, k8, p1 --> 7 rows

p1, C4F, C4B, p1

p1, k2, p4, k2, p1 --> 9 rows

p1, C4F, C4B, p1

p10

The C4F and C4B are the standard cabling over 4 stitches. If I were to make another pair, I'd make the owl a bit shorter, doing 6 and 8 rows in between the cable rows for a rounder head and body. Now I just need to find some buttons for the eyes, but in the meantime I did small knots as placeholders. 

But it didn't end there. I had this super soft alpaca mix in grey and in green, so I decided to make another pair. I wanted some kind of a leaf motif to be on the back and found a pattern I liked. It was in Russian and it was too wide, so after minor adjustments, here was my version of the cable/leaf combo: 

      

The chart shows only the right side rows. The wrong sides (though I knit in round, so no side is truly the wrong side) are knit in pattern: knit the knits and purl the purls. The 3's are knit 3 together and the o's are yarn overs. The whole pattern is over 12 stitches, so I bordered it with 2 purl and 1 knit stitches on each side. 

I wanted the cables to be close to the thumb, so the chart above is for the right hand. For the left hand, I would need a mirror image, replacing knit 3 togethers with slip1-k2-psso (backwards 3s in the chart) and swapping C4F for C4B.

     

It's all fun and games until the yarn runs out though. Half way through the first glove, it became clear that I won't have nearly enough for the second. So I had to abandon this project. The pattern was coming out lovely though -- it just has to wait its turn.