FO: Dashing for The Sweetie

Dashing fingerless gloves
Originally uploaded by knitswithasilentk

Last week, The Sweetie was up at Tahoe with his parents for the last gasp of summer before school starts. Sunday was The Sweetie's birthday (same as Theresa's, so I drove up to pick him up from the Bay Area and we had a little party for him.

I made a truly local dinner - local figs and honey, grapes, raspberries (golden and red) and blackberries, cheese, and crackers, olives (which might have been local; they were from a local distributor), local wine from Wente, "local" pasta (Monterey pasta company in Salinas) with fresh pesto (local garlic, basil, walnuts, olive oil; nonlocal parmesan cheese - but at least it was from Parma, not fake parmesan!), tomato and cucumber salad with basil, roasted vegetables, corn on the cob, bread from a local bakery, and strawberry shortcake (flour, oil, sugar, and baking powder were not local, but we made the cake from scratch). Otherwise, everything we ate was local except for salt and pepper. I got most of it at the farmer's market that morning. It was a great, hearty feast! If there's any time it's easy to eat locally, it's during August in California.

I had intended for nearly a year to knit fingerless gloves for The Sweetie (and some for myself, too), and I decided that it was just doable during the week he was gone.

I knitted at lunchtime while taking a walk (I was the crazy lady at the beach walking around knitting instead of looking at the water, or at where she was going....). I knitted in the evenings watching TV. And these gloves really didn't take very long - they're mostly 4x1 rib with some cables thrown in for interest. It sports a peasant thumb, which was my first - very cool, except that I did have holes which I sewed up when I wove in the end. (There was some blog entry I read a while back that said peasant was where you used waste yarn, but afterthought was when you cut the yarn to make the hole - this one uses waste yarn!)

They fit, although the cables cause tightness around the forearm. It is my suspician that they are intended to fall right at the wrist, but then the hand is much too long. On further thought, it is probably a difference in row gauge - I used heavier yarn than called for, in a smaller needle, but I bet the row gauge threw me off. The photos don't seem to be nearly as long. In any case, the tightness will stretch out and it's not uncomfortable.

Specs:
Pattern: Dashing, the smaller size.
Needles: Size 5 DPNs, Lantern Moon. It's a medium-brown, maple-ish colored hardwood.
Yarn: Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted, color 14ns, Denim, purchased last winter from The Knitting Zone for just this purpose!
Mods: None! Probably next time, if I use a heavier yarn like this, I should shorten the number of rounds between the cables and the thumb to compensate for the row gauge. Duh!