Stranded - Echo hat, Sanquhar Gloves

To continue the streak of Woolly Wormhead hats I've knit in 2021, here is Echo:

It's from the Imperceptions collection, which is full of delightfully labyrinthine designs. They all use fingering weight yarn, so I can easily dive into my sock yarn cabinet to find suitable skeins. The only trick is to select colors with high contrast. Here I'm using some green that's left over from Dave's 50th birthday sheepy socks (and now that green is gone, for all practical purposes...except for a small ball I can use to make blanket squares if I ever do that again), along with a rich brown from an unbroken skein. I originally purchased the brown with two other coordinating colors to make the popular Color Affection shawl, but then I won a kit from Miss Babs with 3 skeins for the same pattern, so I used those. Over the years I've reassigned the other skeins to other projects, and this brown was the last one. Those colors really did look nice together back in 2012 when I bought them!

Like the Circe hat (from the same collection), Echo includes a lateral braid between the corrugated ribbing and the main body:

I really enjoy this fancy little detail. The final hat is a bit slouchy, which some people like and others don't. Here is my hat model:

This had doesn't have an owner yet, but it went into my handknit hat stash and will patiently await its destiny. 

There are still two designs from this collection that I haven't made yet. But rather than start another hat, I decided to shake things up and knit colorwork gloves. This is a kit I got at A' the Airts in Scotland on my big 2019 trip (boy am I glad that happened before COVID):

Take a minute and google "sanquhar gloves" - you'll see some amazing designs. This is a special, fancy glove made in the 19th century. It was traditional to knit the name or initials of the wearer into the cuff. This yarn is labelled "3ply," which is a "weight" of yarn in the UK system. For comparison, what we call "fingering" is called "4ply" in the UK. 3ply is, well, 1 ply less, so it's 25% skinnier than fingering. Is it laceweight? Maybe. Maybe heavy laceweight. Anyway, that is what they use, and the gloves are usually worked on 1.75mm needles. The kit came with a set of Addi 1.75 mm dpns. They are 20 cm in length, which is a bit long by U.S. standards. I tried to start the gloves using those needles and it was super difficult, so I started over on two sets of circulars (my preferred mode of knitting socks). Luckily, I had 1.75mm circs on hand.

I decided not to use my middle initial here for a practical reason. If the gloves came out too small for my hands, I could give them to my mom! Our first and last initials are the same, but not the middle. In hindsight, I should have narrowed the white field on which the initials lie, thus eliminating the need to catch long black floats that show through to the front side a little bit. Live and learn.

Here is the front of the left glove as of today. The main pattern is the most popular one and is called "the Duke" - you'll see it a lot if you look at Sanquhar gloves. I've pinned it out so it doesn't roll. Here is the back, where you can see the thumb stitches being held on waste yarn:

My thumb gusset increases are not perfect, but I decided not to try to tink back. They are very fiddly, especially at the beginning. I bet the next glove will be better.

I'm coming up on the point at which the fingers each need to be worked separately. The pattern shows every finger starting on the same row, but I've read that many knitters stagger them. A quick glance at your own hand will show why - our fingers do not all start on a straight line! I will think about that a little as I approach that point. 

My (extensive) sock knitting experience and my increasing competency with stranded colorwork are coming together perfectly in this project. What fun.