knitting with double pointed needles was confusing. Ms. Stoller offered precious little advice in her book, and what was there only managed to confuse me. Instead I found the videos on KnittingHelp to indeed live up to their name and be very helpful. I've made three fingerless gloves as of today and for the first two I've had to watch the video in order to start. The most confusing part of knitting with double pointed needles is, unfortunately, the first row. After casting on the stitches and distributing them evenly onto three needles (it's easiest to put stitches on the middle needle last)
Make sure that all the stitches have the bumpy part facing inward
Position the needles into a triangle with the needle with the live yarn on top and the middle needle on the right side. Hold this in your left hand.
Hold a fourth needle in your right hand. Coming at the third needle (the one with the first stitch you cast on) on the inside of the triangle of needles start knitting.
For the first 3-4 stitches you can use both the live yarn and the tail so that you won't have to weave the tail in later.
Always make sure to start off with the same positioning. It's really easy to go the wrong way and suddenly have a row of purls where there should be knits. You should also attach a safety pin in between the first and last needle so that you know when a row ends.
As you continue to knit it gets easier. The needles stay in position easier and you can knit with the fourth needle on the outside.
I was really anxious about the cables because the instructions say to hold the cable needle to the back of work. I don't know if this was obvious to other people or not, but it wasn't to me. The back of the work is the inside of triangle.
Another very confusing part was the thumb. I've been finding out that I don't follow written directions as well as I thought I did. I feel like I'm in grade school and I've been given one of those tests with a serious of questions but the first instruction is don't do anything until you've read all the instructions and the last instruction is don't do any of the instructions at all but meanwhile you've spun around in a circle and screamed your name out loud. As I've made the past few gloves, I've realized that I've read things into the instructions that aren't there at all.
The pattern says, "Work 18 rounds in 4x1 Rib. Next Round: Using waste yarn, k7." For the first two gloves I stayed in rib pattern. Whoops.
For binding off the thumb, the pattern says, "BO loosely." I tried to bind off with the Picot method that is used on the top of the glove. Which, by the way, I'm not 100% convinced I'm doing correctly but it looks pretty much like it should-I think.
Also on the thumb the first time I did it I wound up using all 5 double pointed needles. There was so many wooden spokes sticking out of the glove that I could hardly hold onto it.
It's supposed to look like this:
One day I'll write some instructions about how to pick up stitches, but right now I'm still figuring it out. When it comes out like this
I just take out the stitches and do it again.
Oh and there's this problem.
But in the end, I'm pretty happy with the result.
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