I have cold hands.

I think it's part of being tall. You have longer arms and legs so by the time your blood gets to your hands and feet it's not warm anymore. It's a rough existence, being a giantess.

Anyway, this last Summer I made my customary week-long visit to my grandmother who lives a few hundred miles south of me. She knits and even taught me to knit when I was a little kid, though I never got past making blankets for my Barbie at the time. She watches my crocheting and tells me how impressed she is because she could never get the hang of something so complicated. I watch her knit sweaters and things with these fancy designs and say the same thing.

We shop for yarn while I'm visiting, and that's fun. I like looking for yarn in a bigger town that has something resembling a selection, and she gets to look for yarn with somebody who doesn't hate looking for yarn. (My cousins, who do most of the driving for her, just aren't into it.)

All this buildup is to say that on my most recent visit to my grandmother's house this last summer I bought some yarn. Not having any particular project in mind for the yarn, I only bought two smallish skeins of each kind. I keep swearing I'll quit doing that because it's an awesome way to end up with lots of mismatched yarn and nothing to do with it, but I can't stop myself. When I got back to my grandmother's house I looked at all my yarn and thought, "What was I thinking? What's a project I can do with such a small amount of yarn?"

Well, here's the project:



Fingerless gloves. I love them, because, as I said earlier, I have cold hands. Mittens and regular gloves are great for warming your hands, but I like fingerless gloves better when I'm at home because when I wear them I can still type or crochet or play video games or read or whatever. I'm wearing a pair right now. It's great.



I wrote the pattern for these more or less by myself. I didn't have a glove pattern with me at all, but I've made gloves and mittens before and remembered the basic idea of how they went together. I had to come up with the numbers of stitches and what little shaping there was on my own.


It took some trial and error. I was trying to make each glove take one skien. If you've done much yarn shopping you probably know what size skien I'm talking about. The sort of smallish medium size that a lot of novelty yarns come in. Just too small to do much useful with. I had to redo my first glove (one of the reddish ones) a few times to make the cuff shorter because I was running out of yarn. I like the cuff length now, even though it's not as long as I initially envisioned it. It's a convenient length.

The green and red pairs I made over Summer vacation. The last pair, shown below, I made once school started again. That's why it didn't get in the first photo shoot with the other two pairs. It was tardy. It's also the pair I'm wearing as I type this.


This pair has the distinction of being the only pair that came from a skien of yarn that was of a useful size. It's denim yarn and I am in favor of it, even though these gloves are less attractive than the other two pairs. They're sturdy and reasonably priced, at least. I got both of these gloves out of a skien of denim yarn and could probably have gotten another pair if I'd wanted to.

I guess I'll give you the pattern, now. I used a G hook. I'd say the yarn was on the skinnier side of worsted weight, though I can't tell you for sure because all three yarns came from those Commie yarn companies that don't actually tell you what the official yarn weight is, I guess so that if you get a pattern that asks for their specific yarn you can't fudge it with somebody else's of the same size. Jerks.

These gloves are made to fit me. If your hands aren't the same size as mine you'll have to work out how to adjust the numbers of stitches or the lengths to make it bigger or smaller on your own. Sorry. Also, I don't know what the gauge is. Try it out and if it doesn't look right, adjust accordingly. Again, sorry. I can tell you that if you want a longer cuff, just make your starting chain longer. You'll eat up more yarn this way, though, so watch it.

Anyway, here you go:

Using a G hook, ch 11, leaving at least a 10" tail
sc in each ch across
*ch 1, turn, sc in back loop of each ch across* until piece measures 6" (cuff made)
ch 1
sc 27 stitches evenly along the edge of the cuff piece and join at the first stitch to form a ring
sc in each sc around (marking the first stitch of each round) until you're 3 1/2" from the cuff
ch3. Skip 5 stitches (thumb hole made)
sc around in each sc around for 1 1/2 more inches.
Sew up the side of your cuff using the long tail you left at the beginning.
Weave in ends.

I don't really write patterns much, so I hope that was clear. If you're trying to make this and my pattern is nonsensical, go ahead and ask me about it in the comments.

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