YIR: Christmas Knitting 2012

It's time for some more year in review.  I have brought you up to Thanksgiving so far. About 2 days before thanksgiving I decided that it would be an awesome idea to knit all of my family a pair of mittens or gloves for Christmas. I had just enrolled in the Craftsy course Mittens and Gloves Galore with Marly Bird.  Just to be clear, that's 6 pairs of gloves in one month. I gathered up everyone's hand

sizes watched the course content and got to work.  I will say that at least I thought to start with the largest size and work my way to the smallest size, so it would feel like it was all down hill after the first pair.

For all of them I chose to use the 5 in 1 Adventure pattern from the course as it allowed me to make a variety of mittens and gloves all using the same basic information. First up, was a pair of black men's gloves, I decided to do a gusset thumb on all of the pairs, as I felt like they would fit a little better than with the afterthought thumb used in the pattern. I used the concepts for this from some of the later mitten patterns from the class. 

Next, came a pair of black men's convertible fingerless mittens like those pictured above except bigger. I modified the pattern to include a crochet chain loop on the tip of the flip top and a button on the back of the hand to hold the flap out of the way when not in use. 

Then a pair of purple gloves in a women's size. Just like the black ones except a little smaller. followed by a pair of cream colored traditional mittens, these were the least time consuming of all of the projects that I did. No fingers to knit, no afterthought flaps, no buttons. And they were basically white which made all of the stitches easier to see. 

Next was a girls size pair of light pink gloves, and then an even smaller pair of dark pink convertible fingerless mittens. These are the ones pictured. I only got a picture of these because I received them back a few days later with a request to add another button and loop on the front side to keep the flap closed while playing in the snow. I didn't have a chance to photograph the others before sending them off to their permanent homes. Heck, I barely had time to wrap them!  They were all packaged with a small tube of hand lotion to help keep hands from getting dry and chapped in the Ohio winters. 

 I finished the last glove at about midnight on Christmas Eve. I think I must have been crazy. By the end of all of this I was so tired and my hands were so sore, I thought I might have to take a couple of weeks off. No such luck as I got yarn and needles for Christmas. But more on that later...  Needless to say I learned my lesson, and am already working on my Christmas knitting for this year. Maybe I'll be done before Thanksgiving this year!