FINALLY: Cabled Chartreuse Knotty Gloves

"They remind me of rubber dishwashing gloves."

Said my husband, innocently enough, as he photographed me doing the dance of knitting victory with my FINALLY complete spring-green merino wool Knotty gloves.

It wasn't exactly what I wanted to hear about the gloves I had started over a year ago and finished on size 000 needles after three false starts. Maybe it was the color, or the length, or my pose?

Anyway, they fit perfectly now and I just love them. Chartreuse makes me happy!

These gloves were made to fill a serious wardrobe gap. I have several pairs of me-made fingerless gloves, but on truly chilly days I needed real finger coverage. So I've always ended up wearing ill-fitting cheap acrylic RTW gloves that were too short and left my wrists exposed to the cold.

Hence, the Knotty Gloves by Julia Mueller -- a free pattern designed for fingering-weight yarn with actual fingers and lovely cables and just the perfect length (she also has many other gorgeous glove patterns, all currently available for free since she closed her business).

I made mine with Studio Avenue 6 Bellwether Sock in the Spring colorway, a 100% merino wool hand-painted fingering weight yarn that seems to be discontinued (boo!).

My husband made up for his comments by taking an inordinate number of photos for me. We struggled with lighting and focus, though -- most of the outdoor photos (we're visiting my parents, so there actually IS an outdoors) came out terribly, so we came indoors:

Oh, and here's a closeup, but it's preblocking, so the stitches look a bit wibbly wobbly:

And why FINALLY? Well, I started these gloves in February of 2014, and gave up on them halfway through the first when they were coming out way too big even on size 0 needles. I finally found size 000 double-pointed needles (none of my local yarn stores had them, but you can find them on yarn.com or Amazon) and started them over again in January 2015 while I was waiting for baby and needed some serious distraction.

It felt like I was knitting with fragile bits of straw, and I went SO slowly for fear of the needles just snapping on me:

And they were STILL way too big, so I ripped back to the beginning AGAIN and added in lots of decreases (modification details here on my Ravelry project page).

So: hurrah for finishing UFOs, hurrah for chartreuse, and hurrah for the spring weather that means I will need to pack these up pretty soon.

My current creative focus is on the Small Human Being Sew-Along for April, but my next knitting project is finishing up the Hetty cardigan by Andi Satterlund last seen on this blog when my waist disappeared mid-pregnancy:

She just needs sleeves, and then she will be Me-Made-May ready.

P.S. Has a casual comment ever made you feel bad about a just-finished sewing or knitting project that you put a LOT of effort into? I certainly won't be taking these gloves anywhere near soapy dishes!