I don't buy many knitting books. The reason for this being is that I usually think the majority of the patterns are ugly and am thus paying $20 (or whatever) for one great pattern when billions of free patterns are available on the world wide web. Two years ago, however, Moroni and I were strolling through The Loft in the German Village (a really awesome book store) and I stumbled upon a book which I know I have mentioned before called "Knitting New Mittens and Gloves" by Robin Melanson. This book has by far the best patterns for gloves and mittens I have ever found and I love a majority of them. It also easy to adapt these patterns to different sizes and yarn types. I decided to make gloves for all my friends (well not all of them....because I just have to many:)) but a good number of my close friends here in Columbus. I wanted to do it on a budget also. I went to Jo-Ann fabric and bought 4 skeins of the Lion Brand Wool-Ease Worsted Weight yarn in four colors at buy one, get one 50% off (a total of about $12 for all of the yarn...yea) and began to knit, knit and knit some more.
1.
Alternating Current (p20). I had to modify these gloves slightly because the pattern called for chunky yarn. So I used smaller needles and cast on more times...(if you have the book and want to do it with worsted weight instead and want to know my modification I will let you know if you leave a comment). The cute thing about these gloves is that you can knit other wrist bands in different colors and patterns.
2.
Filigree (p60). No modification necessary!
3.
Jack-in-the-Box (p85). This is a modification of the flip-top mittens. I find that the adult small size ends up being to large and the kids is too small so I modified the sizing to something in the middle of the two and then rather than create flip-top cuff I just bind off at the end to create fingerless gloves which are always nice to wear over other gloves here in order to keep your hands warm but making it so your fingers can still function!
4. These are pretty much of my own creation. I used the modified guidelines for the Jack-in-the-box flip-top mittens but with an entirely different pattern. (see #3)
5.
Tapisserie (p124). These were probably my favorites. They also called for a finer yarn than worsted weight so i had to be very creative with the modifications because I ended up taking out 16 rows in the pattern. I also had to figure it out right in my head ahead of time because its not like I wanted to start over in my race to have these to people by Christmas!
6.
Accomplice (p9). These were the first pair I started knitting over Thanksgiving while we were in New York. I wasn't actually sure if I liked the pattern or not, but I must say the picture in the book did not do them justice. They ended up being pretty cute and really easy!
