Yarn Along #17: Whoops!

Joining in with Ginny and the Yarn Along again this week.  This time, to fearless show the world my first attempt at fingers in a glove. Or, more specifically, partial fingers in a fingerless glove. Capisce?

No? I don't blame you.  DH asked me, while I was knitting, why I was making fingers if it was fingerless.  And, if it were truly fingerless, how could it be called a glove?

Anyway, to try to shed some light on this very confused mess (and believe me, glove #1 was a confused mess before I knew it); I am making this pattern.  It will be for DD1's boyfriend, aka my 3rd son (they've now been dating a year longer than DH and I knew each other before we got married!).  I had consulted DD1 on the idea of fingerless gloves for 3rd son's Christmas present, and she told me he would wear them, but only if they had 'partial' fingers instead of the kind that is a tube with a thumb hole.  So, I found a pattern that looked appropriately manly, was large enough, and had finger beginnings.  And I commenced to knitting.

Until I got to finger #3, which was actually supposed to be finger #2 and things were not making sense and my fingerless glove looked like it was for an alien rather than a human being.

palm side of glove

back side of glove

notice anything strange?

Umm, yeah.  My brain and the pattern obviously were not communicating here.  So I frogged back to where you slip stitches onto stitch holders for the fingers.  And I re-read the pattern.  Like five times.  Then I went on Ravelry and read all the notes I could find on the pattern.  None of them mentioned having alien hands.  Then I googled how to make fingers in gloves and came up with some YouTube videos.  

And suddenly it all made sense.  Never having made gloves before, I had followed the pattern, but it assumed that the knitter in question (me) knew that you put the stitches on one stitch holder in the opposite direction as the other.  Something I had not known.

So, I tried again, making sure the second stitch holder was opposite of the first.  And, viola!  A fingerless glove fit for a human!  (Once I get the yarn ends properly woven in, that is.  They are just tucked under for the picture).

I did notice once it was finished, however, that I kind of messed up the pattern on the back of the glove.  There is supposed to be parallel zigzags, and, well, they zig but don't zag quite right.  But you know what?  It still looks okay to the uninformed (the intended recipient), and as long as I make the same mistake on the right hand glove, nobody will be the wiser that it kind of deviated from the original pattern.  I had all ready decided to make the fingers several rows shorter than the pattern anyway, because I only wanted them to go to the first knuckle rather than halfway to the fingertips.

Meanwhile, I also have a little pink pair of mini mittens to show off.  They, too, need their loose ends secured and cut.

mini mittens and cuff of glove #2

And I have finally found a book (I've 'tried out' three or four in the last few weeks) that I will definitely read all the way to the end!  I went and grabbed one by an old favorite mystery author, Donna Andrews, and am enjoying every minute spent reading the past two days.  The Good, the Bad, and the Emus. . . feels like a welcome and much needed rest after figuratively bashing my brain against a few books that weren't my style.