Woes of the Dementor Knucks; Or, Why it isn't recommended to wait a year* before starting the second glove

Last fall, the boyfriend, his DD, and myself attended the fiber festival that is held annually at the Hunterdon County 4H fair. After a day of petting tons of adorable - and aromatic - farm animals and molesting all the fiber and yarn out on display and for sale, I managed to score some beautiful hanks of yarn to throw into my stash. In addition to purchasing stash yarn, I also procured some great Harry Potter themed yarn from Shelby B's Designs for a pair of knucks that the boyfriend requested.



I'm obsessed with being warm. I'm either cold or too hot at any given point of the day and, thus, usually layer myself in clothing and warm-making garments in the cooler months of the year. I made myself a pair of knucks a long time ago, the pair pictured above. I love them - I wear them fall through spring every year. Seeing as I wear them quite frequently throughout the year, the boyfriend got to see them a lot - once he even tried them on, though I begged him to be careful as he has gigantic hands. After deciding that my knucks were just so awesome and convenient, he asked me to make him a pair, too.

While we were at the fiber festival last year, we kept an eye out for yarn in a color that he liked - he was hoping for brown, black or grey. Ultimately, we decided upon the Dementor colorway by Shelby B, a mix of black, gray and purple (which he decided was fitting as purple is my favorite color and, therefore, would remind him of me everytime he wore them).

I got started on winding the hank into a workable yarn ball when we got home that evening, and shortly set to the task of starting his knucks. I had it all figured out, I thought I was being so clever. Seeing as I'm a full-time college student who often takes far too many courses than necessary each semester, my free-time during school is at a minimum. So, I decided that I would make all of the fingers for both knucks first and take extensive notes in order to produce an exact matching glove should I be interrupted by life. Well, my cleverness did not pay off nearly as well as I had thought. Waiting as long as I did to start number 2 after finishing the first one - somewhere like 9 months - proved to be a detriment to the gloves.

Even though my counting was exact both times, I managed to create two different gloves...one has 68 stitches at the cuff, the other is missing 4. One cuff is tighter than the other at the opening (due to this shortage of stitches).

I have been wrestling with undoing the cuff and starting that part again (I can easily increase stitches on the cuff a couple of times in order to create a better match). But then I find myself thinking 'why stop there? why not just rip all the way back to the thumb attachment, count your stitches, then match that the the number of stitches on glove number 1...you have all the rows down pat, just need stitches fixed now.' The perfectionist in me.

The boyfriend insists that he loves them. And that he won't complain a single bit about how tight the one cuff is compared to the other one. Then I think to myself, 'Well, then, you can always just make him another pair, you know. You have brown yarn, now. He likes brown. You could also stripe it with black. He likes black and brown. But this was really nice yarn that you used, it wasn't cheap. Maybe you should just fix the first pair and then make him a pair out of the cheaper stuff later?'

So now I'm cleaning the house in order to keep myself occupied and not think about the knucks for a day. I've been working on them a lot this past week. I've already had to rip back a couple of times - once because I was being stupid and totally messed up the thumb gusset and once because I got antsy and started the 2X2 rib for the cuff early. And that's not to mention all of the times that I had started the crab stitch edging, decided it looked like ass and ripped it back only to start again (that'd be five).

This wasn't the only project to be muffed up in a ridiculous way - the mukluks that I made for my cousin, those too were a victim of poor time management. I started them right around the same time I started the boyfriend's knucks. I made one and then....a whole lot of nothing happened until 9 months later. Following my pattern notes was impossible because I lost them (crap!) and had to just fudge the second slipper. This time, while crafting slipper number 2, I took notes. Extensive notes. After I finished slipper two and realized that it only matched slipper number one in the toe area (the heel and body looked incredibly different), I decided that I was going to redo the first slipper - after all, I only had pattern notes for slipper number 2. Rip, rip, rip. I ripped that puppy all the way back to the first row of the heel gusset. Since this was crochet, it wasn't that difficult of a feat to rip so much of a project out and redo it - knitting tends to be way fussier when I do this. I then found myself with a fairly good pair.

This is probably why I am so tempted to just rip out the cuff from the gloves. I can insert my needles into a straight stockinette row, rip back to that point and try it again....I could insert my needle into the row just above the thumb join and start that again, too....I could also just relax about it, finish the damn gloves, block them and give them to him, already. Poor guy has been waiting almost a year for them.


*so I didn't wait quite a year but, really, "nine months" doesn't read as well as "a year"

Recently, on one of the knitting blogs/communities I read, someone posed a question to the members about helping people learn how to knit. She asked what book, pattern, yarn and needles we recommend to people just starting to learn how to knit. Whenever I teach, or help someone learn, how to knit I always recommend they have four things before they start.

-Stitch N Bitch and Knitting For Dummies. When I first started knitting, I had a "kit" from Michaels that described what to do but didn't show you exactly how to do it. I remember there were illustrations, but it wasn't clear at all how I was supposed to make each stitch. After much frustration, I ended up purchasing both of these books and they helped me immensely. I owe my skills completely to them.

-A basic idea for a scarf. I try to steer beginners away from grabbing a pattern their first time out. When you're just starting the best thing to do is focus on learning how to make the stitches. The benefit to a scarf project is two fold: 1) it gives them plenty of room to make errors, even if they never wear the scarf they will have something to work their stitches out on and 2) if they excel at basic knitting, they can always try out new stitches at various points in the scarf or keep it as a WIP to work out various stitches before committing them to a nicer yarn.

-Caron's Simply Soft (or the Simply Soft Thick & Quick Yarn). I prefer beginners buy this above any other type of yarn. It requires a minimal investment, it's easy to work with, it comes in a wide array of colors so they're sure to find a nice, brighter color to work with that they enjoy. And, finally, it's SOFT. I have a sweater made entirely out of Simply Soft and it's one of my favorite sweaters (save for the neckline WHICH I will be fixing soon enough. Can we say steeking?? I'm totally going to redo the neckline into a V neck because the neckline does not thrill me at all)

-I usually then lend them the size 8 needles I learned on so that they can find a similar pair in a store. (I have a ton of needles, so I won't miss one pair). It's hard to describe them, but they're not metal and they aren't quite plastic. They have some sort of coating on them that makes them a little grippier than regular plastic needles, and they're heavier than regular plastic needles, but they aren't metal. I love them. I found them to be the easiest to work with when I started knitting.

The post also got me thinking about all the funny errors people I know have made while learning how to knit. I find them amusing because they are usually the same mistakes I made when I first started.

The most common mistake I've noticed is picking a yarn that is deceptively hard to work with. These yarns, most notably boucle, are soft and lovely when knitted or crocheted but they're not good for beginners since they're designed to mimic a homespun style of yarn on crack. They usually end up causing more trouble than is worth it for beginners. Especially when they pick a deceptive yarn in a dark color. I have run across many deceptive yarns in my time knitting and each time that I find a new one, I always get angry and eventually give up on it.

My biggest nemesis was the daisy yarn that Moda Dea produced. I'm not sure of the name of it, but it was this novelty yarn that, when knitted up, produced 'flowers' due to the design of the yarn. I should also mention that the flowers hedged on this thin, flimsy thread that was twisted around the yarn, which caused the 'flower' originating bumps which, when knitted into a stitch, would create a daisy on the fabric. If you broke that itty bitty thread, you would not get any flowers until you got to a new part of the yarn where the thread was still in tact. I also was not a fan of the fact that it took 3 balls of the yarn to make one hat. Yea. Wasn't thrilled. It wasn't cheap yarn. Quality wise it was, but price wise it wasn't.


Another friend of mine, who wanted to knit, actually wound up buying herself a big, bright skein of inexpensive yarn and needles and set about teaching herself. She got stumped on how to figure out how to determine the width of the scarf she was knitting so she came over to my mom's house to ask me. She had the needle FILLED with stitches, which wouldn't have been too bad had they not been super huge, long needles. Yipes! I then explained to her about gauge and how the wrapper on the yarn helps you determine the gauge (approximately) and showed her how to knit up a gauge swatch.

I had a similar issue with gauge and such when I knitted my first non-scarf project. I knitted a pair of wrist warmers in purple and black (one was purple with a black stripe and one was black with a purple stripe). I knitted one wrist warmer when I first started, and finished the second one when I had been knitting a while. Obviously, the first warmer ended up being bigger than the second one because I was still making my stitches loose, even though I was following the suggested gauge on the yarn wrapper. Now I live and die by the gauge swatch when making anything wearable beyond basic scarves.

These seem to be the only two that I can think of....but I'm going to blame that on my imminent cold which was been a day in the making and the lack of concentration I possess while I'm sick.