In designing my opera gloves, I am using a couple resources. The first is the stitch dictionary by Barbara Walker, A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns.

Additionally, I did a web search for a few different opera glove designs, but found nothing exactly to my liking. What I want is a glove pattern that goes up the forearm and over the elbow, ending in a ruffle. The fingers will be partial, so it will be a ‘fingerless’ glove, but I do want actual fingers rather than a flat line across the knuckles.

I found it a lot harder to do the swatch with the two lace patterns I’d picked out. I wanted to use one panel that’s a lace rib stitch, two lines, and one as a center panel that’s sixteen rows. It turned out to be too easy to drop stitches on the larger lace pattern, when trying to track both it and the circular knitting. I fiddled and struggled for a while and then realized, if I was having this much trouble on the swatch, I’d hate doing the gloves. I switched to the simpler two row repeat and voila!

One thing I did change, in the pattern, is that it’s a K1 * yo… etc. Well, at first, I did the K1 at the beginning of the round, but not each new needle (I’m knitting on three needles). That was pulling too wide at the joins between the needles, so I decided heck with it, I’d add a K1 on each needle change and it made the pattern much neater. Also, since the pattern is written for flat knitting, I had to reverse row 2 (which is the wrong side row), but luckily it’s just either K or P stitches, no complicated stitchcraft. It’s run to work.

I don’t have pictures yet, but when I finish the swatch I’ll post another update.

So, I joined Weight Watchers. I decided to make milestones for the celebrations, and I’m celebrating my first 5%! I’m so excited. I purchased two skeins of Sock Ease™ yarn from Lion Brand in “Red Hots.” It’s beautiful!

I will say it’s more orange than I was thinking it would be (which isn’t bad, just surprised me). It’s very Autumnal in flavor and I think will look really nice with summer-tanned skin (not that I tan a whole heckuva lot, but hey).

I’m going to make a pair of opera gloves that are fingerless. I’m thinking I’ll have partial fingers go to about the middle knuckle, then have the glove go all the way up to cover the elbow and end in some pretty ruffles. I’m just swatching right now, but I’ll post more as the design comes together in my head.

These are double-pointed needles from Brittany, size US2 (2.75 MM). I want to like them, but I find them too bendy and broke one while making a sock. I’m going to get some Crystal Palace (first I’ll swatch with my CP 3’s and see how it looks, I may just use them). I am also planning to try some metal needles for the really small sizes, 4 and below, because the natural ones just seem to be too fragile when they’re that thin.

My lovely sister in law gave me yarn for Christmas (which is a little like giving crack to an addict, but there you go). Two of the balls are this really fuzzy tribble stuff that have a variegated black and grey colorway with little silver sparkles. It’s fun stuff. I decided to make a triangle shawl with it, since it’s a little scratchy, that way I can wear it over other clothing.

Here’s the progress so far. I’m going to have to switch to circular needles shortly, since I’m running out of room on these. As you can see from the tip, I was adding four stitches every other row – a make one on each edge and a yarn over in the middle once the lace pattern started. I decided to leave off the make one, so I don’t run out of depth (since I only have the two balls). It makes a pleasing sort of rounded heart edge on the point that I like.

This detail picture shows the lacy bit, which is a little silly with such a textured yarn but I like it. Bonus points if you can spot the error!