Nothing says summer like.....gloves

This morning I finished my Socrates gloves.  You may remember the first photo:

Now there are two.  They don't match at all, in terms of the fingers lining up when you put the pair together, because I knit them to fit specific hands since I could try them on as I was working.  This has made me wonder whether or not my hands are different sizes.  It will not be something I lose any sleep over.  I am going to take the rib pattern and modify it to make a scarf and possibly a hat as I have 6 skeins left from the 8 skeins I purchased.  I tend to need scarves before I need hats, so I'm starting with that but I have my fingers crossed that I can do both with the remaining skeins. Each skein is about 77 yards long, so the scarf won't be very long but it's not a wool base so I'm likely only to be using the set in early fall and early spring.

Currently on the needles - fingerless gloves for my friend A, who does a lot of theater ushering in the winter (when the theaters have their busy season) who told me last Christmas that her hands are often cold as she takes tickets.  Ushers dress all in black, so I am knitting Woven Fingerless Gloves using some sparkly black yarn called Vanna's Glamour - its yarn from a collection by Vanna White, the hostess from "Wheel of Fortune."  I've spent more time than I should thinking about whether she's hands on with the yarn selection, or color dyeing, or thread counts.  It seems strange to me that she'd be a television personality with her own line of yarn, but if I were famous I certainly wouldn't be designing clothes, because I'm just about the least-fashionable person you will ever meet.  So I suppose a line of affordable yarns would appeal to me.  Anyway, this was the pair I knit for myself:

I can't get a good shot of the patterning with this yarn because it's so dark.  A will really like these, particularly because there's a shot of sparkle running through the yarn, and she loves shiny things. Sort of like Dory from "Finding Nemo."

And I'm still working on that Opening Night cardigan, still knitting the first 65' x 12" trim piece.  It's now about 15" long.  I might be done by fall.....of 2015.  Still love the yarn though, and not the slightest bit sorry about how much money I spent on it.  The cardigan will be beautiful and very warm once it's done.  If it's done.

A quick project for me

I usually start holiday gifts in August and focus solely on those until I finish - or not; last year Himself got one hand-knit sock for his birthday in early January because the mate was still on the needles when his big day arrived.

This year, because I have suffered from cold hands at work the last two years, I decided to take a quick time-out to make myself a pair of fingerless gloves:

The pattern is Woven Fingerless Gloves by Laura Eckel, from the book One Skein Sock Yarn Wonders, edited by Judith Durant, that I borrowed from the library.  (I like to see if a pattern book has multiple patterns I would make before I invest money in it.  This was the first project I attempted from the book, and it came out great.)

I found this beautiful blue-green yarn at my favorite local yarn shop - it's from Birch Hill Studios, a little-known yarn-dyeing studio in Mason, NH whose owner works part-time at the yarn shop I frequent.  (And who attempted to - unsuccessfully - teach me crochet.) So you can imagine my delight when I found out that I could show my finished product to the very person who selected the color scheme.  We had a discussion about how she needed to dye more yarn and get it into the shop, to which I agreed wholeheartedly.  The yarn is sock yarn, and I love how they came out.  They're soft with beautifully blended colors.

Even though my office building has the furnace running, I've been wearing them regularly at work because I like them so much.  I especially like that I was able to squeeze them into an otherwise crowded knitting season focused solely on other people.