Cold Hands, Warm Heart

I've been plagued by cold hands since I was a kid.  Sometimes they don't thaw out for most of the day, and I've been known to wake myself up during the night by cold hands!  So imagine my delight when fingerless gloves hit the scene as designer ware!!  Woo hoo!  Now I could keep my hands warm AND still use my fingers.

I saw my first alluring pair of fingerless gloves at the Bellingham Farmers Market one summer a few years back.  I know, that's not the time you'd normally be thinking about gloves.  However, being an addicted knitter, I was enjoying the yarn display in the Spincycle Yarn's booth.  Their luscious, handspun yarn was hard to resist.  On display was a pair of fingerless gloves with a lace pattern knitted in.  So of course I had to buy yarn and a pattern to make these beautiful gloves...

I was so thrilled with the way these gloves turned out (and how they actually kept my hands toasty while allowing me to use my fingers!), that I immediately bought yarn and made another pair of lovely gloves...this pair made from sock-weight yarn and with a Victorian flair.  I trimmed the cuffs with small beads...

These gloves proved particularly useful when I needed to work on the computer, since they're so lightweight.  Well, I was in my local, decadent yarn shop, Wild Fibers and couldn't resist some incredibly soft, rainbow yarn.  Here's how the gloves turned out...

Just a note to those of you who are knitters...if you've avoided making socks or gloves, like I did for most of my life, do yourself a favor and take a sock class and learn how to use a Magic Loop.  This replaces the ungainly 4, double-pointed needles that people have traditionally used for knitting round garments with a very small diameter.  A Magic Loop is a circular needle with an incredibly long cable that allows you to use the needle ends in very small place.  I even used the Magic Loop to knit the thumbs in the rainbow gloves above!  Amazing, huh??

Happy knitting!

Deborah