I love knitting fingerless gloves. They usually are a relatively small project, but they can have quite fun and interesting constructions. These ones are designed in triangles around the thumb. The design makes use of the garter stitch feature that one ridge has about the same width and height. The knitting directions changes a few times, so it is a great way to display some self striping sock yarn.
I called them Railroad Crossing Fingerless Gloves because the flat piece reminded me of the traffic sign.
The knitting pattern is available via
The pattern PDF is 20 pages long and contains
- written row-by-row instructions for knitting this piece in one size only – including 19 in-process photos
- an explanation (plus schematic) of the construction,
- short photo tutorials for the following techniques
- crochet CO (at the edge of a knitted piece)
- kbf – knit through back and front of a stitch, a stitch that is symmetrical to a kfb
- german short rows (with double-stitches) and how to work the resulting double-stitches
- pick up and knit
- pick up and connect, i.e. picking up a stitch and connecting it in a 90 degree angle to your knitting
This is NOT a beginner pattern.
Size and Gauge
To get a certain variation in size I knitted not only in 3mm needles (see picture on the right, top pair of mitts), but also one pair with 2.5 mm needles (see picture on the right, bottom pair of mitts):
- With 3 mm needles 26 ridges (53 garter stitch rows) gave me 10 cm in height and 23 sts gave 10 cm in width (with an unblocked swatch, since I didn't block the mitts). The finished piece measures 19 cm in height, with a circumference of 15.5 cm at the top and 19 cm at the bottom.
- With 2.5 mm needles 28 ridges (56 garter stitch rows) gave me 10 cm in height and 25 sts gave 10 cm in width (also with unblocked swatch). The finished piece measures 16.5 cm in height, with a circumference of 14.5 cm at the top and 17 cm at the bottom.
To knit these fingerless gloves you need the following materials
- 150 meters of fingering weight yarn weight yarn
- the pink-yellow ones (title picture) are knitted in Sockenwolle 4-fach Citron by Daniela's Wolltopf (colorway Neolino) - here's a link to the yarn's Ravelry page
- the green/brown/azure blue ones (smaller ones in picture displaying the different sizes) are knitted in Regia 4-ply (Regia Spring Fling Color, colorway 3812)
- the sky blue/light green ones with a bit of red and purple (see picture showing different views below) in knitted with Zwerger Opal Gutenachtgeschichten 4-ply (colorway Das Mädchen und der Blumendrache) - here's a link to the yarn's Ravelry page
- 3 mm knitting needles – I used 80 cm circulars as main needles to knit the thumb
- two additional 3mm knitting needles – I used dpns to knit the panels around the thumb
- a crochet hook that is a bit bigger than the knitting needles (I used a 4 mm hook)
- a tapestry needle – for grafting and to weave in ends
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| Different views (left: before sewing up, middle: back of hand, right: palm) |