The Glove Guid...The Glove Guide will help you achieve a perfect ﬁt, as well as provide useful...

THE GL OV E GUID E 1

theraineysisters.com All images, text, and illustrations © The Rainey Sisters 2011

How to knit a glove that fits like one . . .

The Glove Guide

by Susan and Sally Rainey of The Rainey Sisters.

Gloves are a wonderful way to showcase lovely hand painted fingering weight yarns and your knitting skill. Knitting your own gloves means that you can customize them to fit your hand perfectly.

The Glove Guide will help you achieve a perfect fit, as well as provide useful construction tips. Our original glove patterns incorporate these techniques, and they can be adapted for use with almost any glove pattern.

The key to a perfect fit is understanding the anatomy of both glove and hand. The Glove Guide will walk you through each crucial step in knitting a glove and how to alter a pattern to fit your hand.

Glove GlossaryYou will become familiar with these terms:

• Negative ease• Symmetrical vs Identical

Gloves• Thumb gusset• Notch adjustment• Fourchettes• Tapering

Be prepared to spend a lot of time on the first glove of the pair -- it typically takes two or three times longer to finish the first glove! Why? This is where all the adjustments are made to assure fit. It is necessary to take detailed notes as you work the first glove so the second glove will match. Your second glove will be done in a flash...relatively speaking! We include a generic glove diagram with all of our patterns so you can take notes (row counts, etc.) right on the pattern. See Figure 1. We recommend trying the glove on frequently as you knit. Is it too loose? Too tight? Is one of the fingers too short or too long? Check fit and adjust as you go. (Figure 6 shows the same diagram with the numbers filled in.)



FIGUR E 1

PART ONE: THE HAND

Draw a diagram of your hand as a reference. A hand diagram is extremely useful if you are knitting gloves for someone else (although it may be difficult to surprise a recipient after tracing his or her hand!).

For an accurate drawing, place hand on paper, keeping the wrist straight. It's helpful to place a rubber band around the wrist indicating where you want the cuff to end and the hand to start -- mark this on your diagram. Use a pencil and keep it at a 90° angle to the paper. See Figure 2. Trace as close to your hand as possible. See Figure 3a. (The blue dotted line shows the transition point between hand and cuff.)

Now, measure your hand across the widest part: the knuckles. See Figure 3b. Write this measurement down: _________________________

This measurement, multiplied by your gauge, will determine the size glove you START with. Remember, the first glove is an experiment! You may need to try a different size or alter your gauge once you get going.



FI GU RE 2

FIGU RE 3A! ! ! ! ! FIGUR E 3B

PART TWO: THE GLOVE

Your glove pattern, whether designed by us or someone else, will give you the number of stitches to cast on for the cuff, and tell you how many stitches you should have when you start knitting the hand. Look at your hand measurement and your gauge. If your hand measures 7 inches around and your gauge is 8 stitches to the inch, you may assume you need 56 stitches for your hand. That can be a little misleading because several factors affect fit.

NEGATIVE EASEEase refers to how tightly or loosely something fits. Most sweaters have positive ease, meaning the garment is bigger than the person wearing it. For example, if the actual bust measurement is 34 inches and the sweater measures 38 inches across the bust, this indicates 4 inches of POSITIVE ease. If the sweater measures 34 inches, it would have ZERO ease and be relatively form fitting. If the sweater measured 30 inches, it has NEGATIVE ease. (And perhaps someone needs a new sweater.)

Hats, socks and gloves are usually knit with negative ease. If they are not, they do not “hug” the wearer’s hand, and they feel too big. Susan’s hand measures 7 ½ inches and her finished gloves are 6 ¾ inches. Sally’s hand measures 7 inches and her finished gloves are between 6 ¼ and 6 ½ inches.

Check your gauge and your hand measurement against the number of stitches called for in the pattern when choosing which size to knit. If necessary, add or subtract a few stitches using the diagrams provided at the end of the Glove Guide. (Note: If changing the number of stitches would be difficult because of patterning on the glove, consider going up or down a needle size and making the adjustment through gauge.)

SYMMETRICAL VERSUS IDENTICAL GLOVESGloves fit best when the thumb is placed slightly toward the palm of the hand. (In other words, the stitches aren’t divided evenly between the palm and back of hand; the back of the hand contains a few more stitches.) This means that the right and left glove are mirror images of each other, i.e, symmetrical. Just like shoes, they have to be worn on the correct hand. This works well if the gloves have a defining feature that makes it easy to spot the right glove from the left at a glance. Otherwise, it can be annoying.

If there isn’t an easy way to spot right from left, it may be easier to make the two gloves identical. Identical gloves, affectionately called “clown gloves,” fit either hand. They’re especially great for children. Identical gloves tend to feel slightly looser on the hand than symmetrical gloves.



THUMB GUSSETMittens and gloves typically have a thumb gusset to provide the additional room needed for the extension of the hand at the thumb (shown in gray in Figure 4).

Note the dotted line across the wrist in Figure 4. This is a tracing of Susan’s hand, and the line shows where she likes her cuff to end and the hand to begin. (This corresponds to the same dotted line shown in Figure 3a earlier and in Figure 6 on the next page.) There is space between that line and the beginning of the thumb gusset, which needs to be filled in by knitting a few plain rows before the gusset. If your hand diagram shows a similar “gap,” keep that in mind and adjust your pattern if need be. Write down any added rows so you can make the same change to the second glove.

Second, keep in mind the depth of the gray area versus the depth of the thumb gusset called for in the pattern. Typically, a glove pattern will tell you to make a certain number of paired increases over a certain number of rows. Let’s say your pattern tells you to increase eight times every

three rows. 8 x 3 = 24. If your row gauge is 10 rows to the inch, your thumb gusset will be 2.4 inches. If you need a deeper thumb gusset, you can either knit a few additional plain rows at the end of the gusset or space out the last few increases. Again, keep track of your changes so that you can repeat them for the second glove.

Figure 5 demonstrates an easy way to check the depth of your thumb gusset before you knit the rest of the hand. Insert a spare double pointed needle at the gusset markers. to anchor the gusset. Otherwise, it's easy to stretch the glove into a misleading fit.

What happens if you can't try on the glove -- say it's for someone else -- and must work



FIGU RE 4

FI GURE 5

strictly from the hand outline you've drawn?

Figure 6 explains how to translate your hand diagram into key measurements for your knitting. The gray arrows show where to measure the depth of the thumb gusset, the hand from wrist to the base of the little finger, and finger length.

NOTCH ADJUSTMENTFigure 4. The purple dashed lines in Figures 4 and 6 show the difference in placement of the little finger notch and those of the other fingers. The little finger "sits lower" than the other fingers. This difference varies from person to person, and can easily be accommodated in your glove. Sometimes this difference is only a row or two, and sometimes it can be as much as ¾ inch. Accounting for this notch may be the single most important adjustment for a truly custom glove. It really makes a difference in comfort and fit for the wearer. Gloves that don’t adjust for a deep notch tend to pull up on the heel of the palm, and may extend the little finger of the glove past the tip.

To accommodate the notch:

After completing the thumb gusset, knit to the base of the little finger. Knit the little finger (temporarily placing the remaining stitches on a holder). Join the remaining stitches and work in the round to the base of ring-middle-index fingers. Write down the the number of rows you added for the notch. Then knit the remaining fingers.

FINGER ADJUSTMENTS

Fourchettes

The red dots in Figure 4 show the base of the fingers. When working the glove, extra stitches are added at these points. Those stitches accommodate the thickness of the fingers and close the opening between the palm and the back of the hand. These stitches create the part of the glove called "fourchettes." (Fourchette is the French word for fork; think of your fingers as the tines.)

You make adjustments here by adding more or fewer stitches than called for in the pattern. For example, Sally often has to add an extra fourchette stitch to her little finger. If you add a stitch to one finger, it will automatically add one to the adjacent finger (because you pick up for the next finger in those fourchette stitches). If an extra stitch isn't needed for that finger, decrease when working the next finger.

When you add your stitches and start the fingers, you may find that you have small holes between the fingers. Picking up an additional stitch or two and then decreasing on the next row may help.



FIGU RE 6

Finger LengthUse your diagram to determine finger length. Stop just short of the measurement on your drawing – by about ¼ inch. The tip shaping will take it to the proper length. If you are trying on the glove instead of relying on the diagram, knit until 1-2 rows short of being even with the finger tip, then start the shaping.

When you try on your glove for finger length, be sure to “push down” between your fingers so the glove fits as if it were on tightly. Otherwise, you may short yourself a few rows and the glove will either pull up or the fingers will feel too short.

It's a good idea to leave a long tail, enough to knit several rounds, until the entire glove is finished. Sometimes the fit feels different once all of the fingers are complete. It's easy to remove or add a few rounds at the last minute if needed.

TaperingThe tips of your fingers taper and are smaller around than the base. Sometimes, the stretchiness of the fabric alone is enough to attain a good fit from base to tip, but sometimes more adjustment is needed. (Note: if you often wear a ring, you may need an extra stitch or two at the base of your ring finger.) There are two ways to taper your fingers:

1. Change needle size:

Switch to a smaller needle after the largest knuckle. If necessary, switch again closer to the tip. This method is virtually invisible.

2. Decrease stitches:

You can also decrease stitches as you near the tip of the finger. This method is more noticeable (as shown in Figure 7), so try to place the decreases toward the palm side of the fingers.

ALWAYS write down all row counts for your fingers throughout the first glove, using your own diagram or the one provided.



FI GU RE 7

Finishing the TipsThe finger tips are worked alike as follows:

FingersRnd 1:

(k1, k2tog) across all sts,

k to end if nec.Rnd 2:

knitRnd 3:

k2tog across all sts, k to

end if necBreak yarn and pull through remaining sts

ThumbRnd 1:

(k2, k2tog) across all sts,

k to end if nec.Rnd 2:

knitRnd 3:

(k1, k2tog) across all sts, k to

end if necRnd 4:

k2tog across all sts, k to end if

necBreak yarn and pull through remaining sts

In Figure 8, you can see all the numbers Susan noted as she knit each section of her glove. She has written down the number of rounds for the cuff, the hand, and each finger. The line that bisects each finger shows where she tapered for a better fit. Looking at her filled in glove diagram, you can see that she knit 8 rows to adjust for her notch adjustment. And, finally, you see the finished project: the hand enclosed in a glove that fits perfectly.



FI G URE 8

PART THRE E: FINGE R DIAGRAM S

On the next few pages we have included finger diagrams for many sizes. Our glove patterns will not use all of the possible combinations shown, but they will allow you to make adjustments, design your own gloves, or adapt another pattern to fit different sizes or gauges. For instance, by using the finger counts for a 41-stitch hand, you could adapt an adult glove pattern for a child or make gloves in worsted weight yarn for an adult.

The diagram takes the total stitch count and shows how the stitches are distributed across the fingers. It also shows the number of stitches added for the fourchettes. The left and right gloves are essentially the same – but note that the left hand starts at the little finger and works across the palm whereas the right glove starts at the little finger and works across the back of the hand. (The thumb stitches are not included in these diagrams.)

In the 41-stitch diagram, the numbers on the outside add up to the total stitch count: (5x6) + 11 = 41. The “3s” represent the number of fourchette stitches added for each finger. Add a stitch here if needed to make the fingers larger (of course, noting any changes on your glove diagram!).



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