Little Gloves and Christmas Coming

I know, it's not even Halloween and I'm talking Christmas.  Well, to be fair, I'm not a huge fan of Halloween.  It's a lot of money to spend just for one night, and it's a more overwhelming night for me.  Spooky and scary isn't really my thing.  Besides, for crafting, there's not enough time to start on Christmas gifts after Halloween is over.  It ends up with stressed out knitting and a rapid struggle to get finished in time for Christmas.  For me, this starts with big plans to make handmade gifts for everyone, and ends with me finishing the stitching on a doll, deciding it's just not worth it to wrap the package before Christmas morning because that will mean not sleeping at all.  This is why I've stopped doing handmade gifts.

This year I don't have a lot of money for gifts, but I do have a small stash of yarn.  My kids need socks, so I want to knit some for them.  The kids haven't had any socks I've made for them in quite some time, so it's definitely time to knit up some more.  If I start working now, I should have a pair for each of them in plenty of time for Christmas.  But the most wonderful thing about sock yarn is it always leaves scraps.  Unless I were to do toe up and measure them out, there's no way I would finish off a whole ball of sock yarn.  Because of this, I've got scraps to do other cool things with.

Little Bear laid claim to my last sock yarn, from the pink socks I just finished.  He wanted me to make him socks, which would have probably been perfect a year or two ago, but now I think his feet are probably too big for making socks with my scraps.  Instead I decided to go for another project I'd made for him before, which was always fantastically successful.  I can whip them out in no time.  They're almost perfect take along knitting, but they really just knit up too quickly to be good for travel.  I knocked out a whole glove in the short bits of time I was knitting at this weekend's game day.  They're small, cute, and incredibly easy to make.

I did modify the original pattern quite a bit to make his little gloves.  I increased the number of stitches in the hand and the gusset since I'm using a smaller yarn than called for (sock not DK) and smaller needles (one size smaller) because that's what I have on hand.  I suppose I did have size 3 needles on hand, and I could have doubled the yarn to give it a thicker weight, but I decided it was a nicer finish to have them smaller and tighter.  It just more suits the knitting I like, and the tighter fabric will just be so much warmer for my kids as the winter rolls in.  It makes for a nicer product in the end, or at least that's my opinion.

I finished the first gloves while sitting in the parking lot of Walmart, waiting for someone to run in and pick some stuff up for the weekend's game day.  I hadn't expected to finish them before I'd arrived, nor did I expect to have much time to knit, but they worked up so quickly that they were finished before we even arrived.  I'd forgotten how quickly simple little projects like this can whip up.  I'm really happy with the way they turned out.  The real challenge was keeping them away from Little Bear, who wanted to wear them as soon as they were off the needles!

I was glad I'd packed additional yarn for the trip.  I knew I was going to finish these quickly enough, but I hadn't anticipated needing to cast something on as soon as I got in the door.  I'd thrown in some green yarn I'd used to make some fingerless gloves for Frog Buckets a year ago.  He'd loved those gloves, but they've since went the way of his other pairs, undoubtedly eaten by the void.  He always seems to find them at some later point, sometimes together, sometimes not.  Over the summer he found one glove of an earlier pair and insisted on wearing just that glove to his summer care for months.  Now that he's in school he's been begging me to make more gloves for him to wear.  He wants to show them off to all of his Kindergarten friends.  This meant he was next up on the list, since I wanted to make sure his got done.

His were yet larger, and they look far more simple because of the plain green coloring.  They're not as fancy looking, and they're a little bit lighter, since the sock yarn I'd made them out of is a little less heavy.  I cast the first one on at game day, and had expected to maybe clear the ribbing.  I ended up just watching everyone game, so I was able to knock out the first full glove during the event.  I even threw in the bind off.  This reminded me why I really need something a little more lengthy, like socks.  I wasn't thrilled with the idea of casting on twice at one event.  Next time I'll definitely plan better and leave the gloves for television knitting at home!

The second glove was cast on after we got home.  The kids were exhausted and dropped off to bed, but I stayed up to start on the other glove.  It was done early this morning, after feeling like somehow it must have been magically knit on during the night.  There was no way it was as close to finished as it was!  I'm still astounded at how quick and easy these gloves work up.

The only down side is I'm not used to knitting for my kids enough that any of this can be a surprise.  I want to check it to make sure the fit is good.  Nothing would disappoint them on Christmas morning like gloves that were too small, or socks that they couldn't wear yet.  This means the kids are going to know what their presents are ahead of time.  They're even going to have tried them before Christmas.  That's the down side to this process, but the up side is I know they love them!

Next year I think I'm going to plan on doing things differently.  I'm hoping I can have multiple projects going at once, so I can knit the kids projects after they go to bed or when they're not home and I can do the projects for other people when they're around.  After a year of getting better in the swing of fitting, I should have enough confidence to knit them a few things without having to worry about trying them on.  I can be the good gift knitter then.  For the time being, they're just going to have to deal with knowing what they're getting, and knowing it's going to be something they'll truly love!