A Good FO Friday

Today is Good Friday. Good for a number of reasons. Good because today is the start of my 12 days off work. I don't go back till 4th May! Good because the weather is stunning here in the south of England at the moment. Good because I finally finished my cabled fingerless gloves!

However, there is always a tinge of sadness on Good Friday for me. When I was a baby, not even a year old, my grandfather suffered a heart attack while driving through Bradford city centre. Fortunately, Gran was in the passenger seat and was able to bring the car under control and stop it safely without causing an accident, but Grandad went to hospital and never came home again. He died on 20th April. It was Good Friday.



Not long after I'd been born. He looks a bit scared of me, I think!



Taken a few weeks before he died

It's funny, because I never really knew him at all. But I still miss him, all the same.

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Anyway, enough of that. On to the finished projects! I have finished my granny rectangle, of course, but I am home alone this weekend and am unable to take a decent photo of myself using it, so I don't have a new picture to share. It looks pretty much like it did in the last photo, just without the ends dangling!

But what you're really interested in is the gloves, I can tell. With the house to myself yesterday evening, I was determined to get them finished. I put on a film (Julia & Julie, if you were wondering. I enjoyed it, but it wasn't as good as I was expecting) and got out my tapestry needle to weave in all those ends. If I was making these gloves again, I would do them differently, just to avoid all the ends it creates.

So, without further ado:


Tadaaaaaa!



Pattern: Cabled Crochet Fingerless Gloves by Sarah Hoyte (Rav page here)

Yarn: Hayfield Bonus Aran in purple heather (just under 100g in total)

Hook: 4mm

Notes & Mods: The pattern I used for these gloves is based on a free hat pattern. When I started these gloves, I'd never done cables before, but was referred back to the hat pattern, as there is a handy photo-tutorial on doing cables in crochet. Of course, that's when I got the idea for doing a whole matching set; hat, gloves and scarf.

I realise now, if I'd made the hat first, I'd have been better prepared for the gloves. If I'd explored the internet further, I'd have realised that it is possible to work these cables flat, as well as in the round. This would have saved me a lot of end-weaving, as instead of finishing off each round and starting again on each side of the thumbhole, I could have just turned my work and kept on going. Lesson learned, do it properly next time! It's easy enough, just do bptr instead of fptr when doing the cable twist bits.

I originally did 5 twists in my cables, before finishing off with the rib cuff, as I was running out of yarn. This left them a little uncomfortably short. So I got more yarn, ripped back my cuff and added an extra two twists of cable. Those six rows make a lot of difference! As mentioned on Wednesday, my new yarn is a different dyelot to the original, so my cuffs are a lot darker!

I didn't like the way the thumbhole was massive. I felt my thumb would get too cold. So I had a bit of a think, and decided all I really needed was a sort of shaped flap that would cover the fat, fleshy part of the thumb, but leave me with a full range of motion. I didn't want the restricton of a thumb "tube". It's literally a few rows, worked back and forth, starting in the bottom of the thumb hole. It goes something like this:

with right side of glove facing, attach yarn with slip stitch to the bottom of the right edge of the thumbhole.

R1: sc, hdc, sc, slipstitch in left side twice

R2: ch 1, turn, sc, hdc, bpdc in hdc of R1, hdc, sc, slipstitch in right side twice

R3: ch 1, turn, sc, hdc, hdc, fpdc in bpdc of R2, hdc, hdc, dc, slipstitch in left side twice

R4: ch 1, turn, sc, hdc, dc, bptr in fpdc of R3, dc, hdc, sc, slipstitch in right side, fasten off.

So there you have it. Matching gloves and hat. All I need now is a matching scarf or cowl. No pattern that suits on Ravelry so far, so I'll have to make one up. I've had a few ideas, done a few test swatches. But I'm going to wait till autumn to work it out, I can't be making warm snuggly scarves in the middle of summer!

This post is part of Tami's FO Friday and Beth's Fibers on Friday. Go check them out!