Happy holidays everyone! I’m traveling to Boston this year, and I had a bit (quite a bit) of downtime in the airport – enough that I had to take a break from knitting – so I thought I’d write a quick post about the one and only handmade gift I gave this year. You may remember the fingerless gloves that I gave my mom last year for Christmas, and, this year, she wanted another pair. I’d done a few cable projects recently, so I wanted to incorporate some cable details into the gloves. I also wanted to try making a thumb (a thumb tube?) instead of just having an opening for the thumb.

I’m so happy with how they turned out! I was very excited to use a sock blank for the first time AND to get to knit with Stranded Dyeworks yarn for the first time. The sock blank is single stranded, so the gloves did turn out pretty different from each other. I kind of like that effect, though.

The yarn is 75/25 % superwash merino/nylon, and the colorway is called naive watercolor. I thought it was so exciting to see how different the original blank and the knitted project are. And I love the bright colors!

My mom really wanted gloves with ruffled edges, and I like the stretchiness of using a 2×2 rib. I knitted these with 64 stitches on 2mm (US size 0) needles. I made the ruffled edges by casting on 256 stitches and knitting 2 together for 2 rows. For the finger end ruffles, I just knit in the front and back of each stitch for one row and then did my bind off. I’m in the process of writing up the pattern for these gloves (including a chart for the cables), but I’m not done yet, and I wanted to go ahead and share them! I’ll update this page when I’ve gotten the pattern on Ravelry.

My mom kindly agreed to model these for me. I’m not quite as good of a photographer as my boyfriend, who normally takes my finished object photos, but I think the pictures turned out pretty nicely. (I also crocheted the scarf she’s wearing! It’s based on this Steve Madden one.)

I’m hoping these will wear better than the ones I made her last year, since these have 25% nylon, and the ones I made last year were 100% superwash merino.

I was really hoping to get a few more things finished before the new year so that I’d be able to cast on some new things, but I think that may not happen based on my holiday plans. I did finish up my block-a-month afghan! Post to come once I figure out how to take finished object photos (it’s large!). My current active WIPS are:

• Elibelinde sweater
• Gabrielle tunic
• Vanilla socks
• Oblagon wrap

I’m hoping to at least finish up the socks (I’m on sock #2) and the sweater (I finished the body and need to do the sleeves) soon.

Anyways, happy holiday knitting everyone!