Knitty Reviews My Glove Booklet

My glove knitting booklet was reviewed in the current issue of Knitty. This was a great surprise since I sent them a review copy when I first published it years ago (maybe 2007?).

Here's the review:

"Glove knitting is a great find for the adventurous knitter who wants to design and create their own gloves. This very detailed technical guide provides the knitter with multiple styles of thumb and finger creation types as well as the pro and cons for each style. Each style is clearly defined and includes a “best used when” explanation. There are two patterns are included in the booklet. Both involve stranded colourwork. The first design is a good introductory style colourwork glove, while the second would be better suited to an experienced knitter. If you are ready to take the plunge and knit “off the grid”, then this booklet is an excellent resource to add to your collection. " They linked to the Lulu page for the booklet but the booklet is also available in print at Amazon and as a PDF download at Ravelry and Patternfish.

I've been organizing my future projects. I just ordered some purple and green Wool of the Andes sport to make the Undergrowth hat from the current Knitty and I also ordered some Palette to make the Heart of the Mesa Mittens, La Joie du Printemps mittens, and the Red Bud Gloves. I am also planning to make quite a few of these gorgeous double knit TPHPE potholders with my Cascade 220 stash.

Here is Bubbles getting her jaw rubbed which is her third favorite activity after eating and ripping up phone books.

New Glove Booklet

Thank you everyone for your great suggestions on baskets and cashmere yarn for gloves! I did try Colourmart but couldn't find my color; it is good to know that their stock changes so I will keep checking back.

I still plan to get you the free colorwork scarf pattern for you soon; I just need to grab DH to model it. I also have a mitten FO to photograph this weekend.

I'm reconsidering my decision to publish a second glove booklet with step-by-step photos for beginners using both dpns and circular needles. My original Glove Knitting booklet recently received a poor review on Amazon HERE (unfortunately it is the only review). One thing the reviewer was unhappy with was the cost of the booklet and I do understand - pricing is always a struggle for me. The print costs are really high for self-published color booklets and I've often thought of not offering print booklets at all. For a $14.99 booklet sold in print I make between $1 and $2 dollars on Lulu and on Amazon. I just can't do the beginner's glove booklet economically as I have so many photos and it would be difficult to keep the page number below 40 pages.  Currently I'm putting it off indefinitely.

Bubbles is enjoying our warmer, sunnier weather. If there is a patch of sun anywhere, she plants herself there immediately.

Glove Knitting Booklet

The glove booklet is finished and for sale at my Lulu store. Catchy title, eh? It is 36 pages, all-color, with over 50 photos, diagrams and charts including a gallery of gloves that don't fit. The price is $18.38 for print or $8.75 for a .PDF file. You can also email me at nanetteblanchard (at) earthlink (dot) net if you would prefer to pay by check - Lulu takes both credit cards and Paypal.

I originally wanted to add more glove patterns but I had to work to keep the price down (all-color booklets are more expensive to print). I plan to add more glove patterns (including one with individual finger gussets) to the store individually at a later date.

HERE is the book's info page and HERE is the KAL page for either of the glove patterns from the booklet. Please let me know if you'd like to sign up for the KAL - one thing I thought we could do is get KAL members to upload photos of their hands so we could talk about modifications to make their hand-knit gloves fit better.

Geometric Gloves

The world's largest caterpillar stopped by to say hello while I was photographing the second glove I'm doing for the booklet.


These gloves have a sore thumb gusset and tapered fingertips and the fingers are worked in the opposite direction as the gloves with the colorwork cuffs from a few days ago. This is a woman's medium and you'll need 2 (50 g) skeins of black in Knitpicks Palette and small amounts of white and 6 other contrast colors.



This is the men's medium version of the same glove knit in Elann's Devon sport weight wool which is nice and soft and stretchy but a bit finer than most sport weight yarns. To knit the men's glove you need one skein mineral green and two skein of Cape Cod blue. Unfortunately neither of these colors is currently available at Elann but there are some other fun Devon colors.



The colorwork cuff gloves with the peasant thumb require 2 (50 g) skeins of Knitpicks' Palette in the main color and small amounts of 9 other colors for the cuff for both the small and large woman's sizes.

For those who plan to knit these gloves on dpns (instructions will also be given for 2 circs), I highly recommend you buy some glove needles from 4" to 6" long. I am amazed at how much faster I can knit glove fingers when using shorter needles. There will be more sources in the booklet but Spin Blessing and Patternworks have the largest selections of glove needles in various materials. My glove needles of choice are the extremely inexpensive Inox/Prym dpns from Spin Blessing - not too slick and not too sticky and unbreakable so far. If you can, get glove needles in all sizes from 2.5mm to 3.5 mm as you'll find you need the variations. Many knitters use a different size dpn for the fingers because of tension differences in knitting small tubes.

I still want to knit another version of each glove but I hope to have the glove booklet for sale by this weekend.

Colorblock Gloves

This photo shows the glove fix I talked about when the base of the little finger is lower than the base of the other fingers. I've knitted several rows even after knitting the finger and I stop right when I get to the webbing between my ring and middle finger. Then the finger knitting resumes.



These gloves are actually the same size but the orange ones have extra length between the color pattern and thumb base. The orange ones are also still a bit damp from blocking. I think the rounded fingertip shaping shown here looks more anatomical than the tapered fingertips usually done on colorwork gloves.

I still have at least four more of these gloves (in more colors of Knitpicks' Palette) to knit before the pattern will be ready. I want to change the numbers slightly for the index and middle finger and I want to also knit them using two circular needles. This is the small size and I still need to do a larger size.

I've also started the second glove pattern using Elann's Devon yarn. Devon is labeled a sport weight but it is quite fine. I'm curious to see what it will look like knitted up on the suggested size 4 (US) needles. The second glove pattern will have a color pattern throughout the hand and fingers, a sore thumb gusset, and will have sizing up to a men's large.

Glove Knitting Booklet Progress

To those of you who are reading this on Bloglines and just catching up, I'm currently doing a little booklet about glove knitting with three to four colorful women's and men's patterns and as much technique info as I can gather.



Gloves are like socks in that not every pair will fit every hand well. There really are two issues in glove knitting to consider - the thumb gusset (if any) and where the other fingers start. I'll talk about thumbs next week.
I prefer glove patterns where all the fingers do NOT start on the same row. Nancy Bush wrote a great glove article in an old issue of Interweave Knits ("Gloves Galore", Fall 96 IK) and she recommends starting the little finger 1/4" lower than the other fingers.




My little finger starts 1/2" lower than my other fingers so I prefer to start the little finger and the fourth finger on different rows for the best fit. (DH, on the other hand, has fingers that start pretty much at the same point so I do things differently for his gloves.)

Another thing I like in a glove pattern is when each finger has a different amount of stitches. Everyone's fingers aren't usually the same exact width. My little finger is 2" wide at the base while my index finger is 2 1/2" wide. This adjustment in the number of stitches for each finger of course makes a color pattern on the fingers a complete pain but well-fitting gloves are worth it. Gloves aren't exactly the speediest thing to knit so you might as well take the time to make them fit perfectly.

I have future glove recipients trace their hands (like children do when drawing turkeys) in my knitting notebook and I keep those tracings to help me when it is time to fit their gloves.




I'm ready to start on my first pair of gloves for the booklet. It is going to have a patterned cuff but have a plain hand in a lighter color which will be easier to photograph and knit for those new to glove knitting.

I purchased some of Elann's Devon sport weight wool which is about as thick as I think I can go for gloves with the extra thickeness of the floats for colorwork. I think the Devon is a good choice and depending on my color needs, I may use this yarn for all the gloves in the booklet. (I also looked into the Knitpicks Telemark sport weight yarn but some of the stuff I read about it says it bleeds and that isn't acceptable if you're doing colorwork.) In my efforts to be better organized and provide exact yarn and color info in my patterns, I cut a small piece of each color of Devon yarn and taped it next to the color and number on the Elann receipt.

For needles for the glove project, I bought some metal 6" dpns in 3 sizes at Spin Blessing for around $3 each. I'd prefer 4" dpns for the fingers but 6" dpns should do pretty well for both the glove fingers and the hand. 8" dpns are really just too long for doing tiny glove fingers. I may buy more dpns at some point to check them out - look for a later post on all the glove needle/short dpn online sources I could find.