Julia Mueller has the most spectacular glove designs I have ever seen. I started with Knotty gloves last spring, and as the third round in Lankakauppa Kerä's Head-to-toe-challenge was for wrist warmers (mitts, gloves etc) I knew that I wanted to pick another one from Julia's collection. With some leftover beads from Tour-de-Sock last summer, I decided to see how subtle the effect of red beads on red yarn would be. Arkema pattern seemed to have enough going on to make the project interesting. Pattern printed, yarn wound, tools ready, and onto an intercontinental flight!

I planned on knitting these gloves on my holiday in Indonesia, even if I was still working on Head-to-toe-challenge round 2 scarf when leaving home. I did get started with the gloves in Bali, but I didn't even finish the scarf during the holiday (which was nice, as it means that the holiday really was a holiday, also from knitting). After the holiday I put the gloves on my knitting table by the TV. This pattern does require attention, so you can't knit while reading, and you can't really carry it around with all the beads and stuff. So I would work on the gloves during the evening news - for the following 2 months!! If I ever pick up a project like this again, I really need to start watching more TV...




The gloves are lovely, and they would be worth every minute spent on them, had I paid more attention to my gauge. Normally I always swatch to find out my gauge and adjust needles if necessary, but this time I figured that since I only have 2,5 mm DPNs there's no point in swatching. And then I went for the largest size, because, well, I have big hands. Unfortunately, my hands are not big enough to accommodate the loose gauge, so the gloves don't really fit like a glove.


Another thing that you should always do is to read through the whole pattern. This one starts with the cabled cuff knitted sideways, then you pick up stitches on the side for the hand, and then on the other side to continue with the cuff in the opposite direction. At some point I was looking at the picture and thinking that it looks like an i-cord on the edges of the cabled cuff, but there were no instructions to do an i-cord edging in the first part. Well, after you thought that the gloves were finally finished, there's still the part where you pick up stitches for the add-on i-cords...


Today is RUMS day.