2021 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

PipneyJane

florianatwobob said:

Having sat in one of our remote offices today and ended up with chilly fingers I shall have to look at making some wrist/hand warmers. There is yarn in the stash but I’m not sure if I have enough ‘nice’ yarn to make them, even with some creative mix and matching. I’ll have a look over the weekend. 

You have my sympathies, @florianatwobob.  I regularly have freezing hands, so now own a collection of fingerless mits.

I have a couple of different go to patterns.  The first is basic and uses less than 50g of 4-ply sock wool:

On 2.5mm dpns, cast on 60 stitches.  Join the yarn and work in K2P2 rib for 40-ish rounds.  Work flat for 10 rows (i.e. get to your round marker and turn back).  Rejoin and work another 15 rounds.  Cast off.

The other pattern is one of Anne Budd’s and uses 50g of DK.  I’ll see if I can find it on Ravelry and paste a link.

ETA Here’s the link:  https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/fingerless-mitts .  Sadly, the pattern only seems to come in a book (Weekend Knits.)

- Pip

Laura_Elsewhere

I've just started knitting these for my splendid Younger Niece - flip-top mittens with flip-top thumbs, so she can have warm hands AND still be able to pick up after her dog, feed her dog treats when training her when they're out walking and use her hands for her phone... 
I'm doing a few variations, of course, or I wouldn't be me, but it's a good basic pattern. To make hem without the flip-top you get to the bit where it says to divide in half and knit 22 rows seed-stitch but you keep in the round and just knit a few rounds to cover the knuckles, in rib if you like, and cast off...

https://blog.expressionfiberarts.com/2012/11/06/crimson-converti-mitts-free-knitting-pattern/

florianatwobob

Thank you so much for the links. Unfortunately I’m a happy hooker (crochet) rather than a knitter so will need to find an appropriate pattern

Cherryfudge

@Laura_Elsewhere, I am intrigued by your ideal of couponing your way out of the stash, I am tempted to join you though I know it will take me a good while.

Question: I might be using some of my stash on baby garments so I might use very little yarn for an unfairly high amount of coupons, e.g. baby bootees would use very little but I assume they are 'socks' which I think are two coupons. How would we make that fair? I remember children had a larger number of coupons but I don't know how that might affect reverse couponing.

@PipneyJane, that first glove pattern is very tempting - in fact I might end up trying that for my DDiL with some nice mustard-coloured yarn that I bought to repair something but in daylight the colour is wrong. I remember my sister making me fingerless gloves with a tiny crochet chain between the fingers - could have been a similar pattern. I would be using circular needles though because I'm afraid of dropping the stitches off DPNs. (How do people not drop them?)

Laura_Elsewhere

@Cherryfudge,well baby bootees wouldn't be any coupons at all because an expectant mother got a special issue of a layette which would include bootees along with things now long-forgotten - who's recently seen a pilch, for example? Moe widely-known now for some obscure reason as a "soaker", it's an old name for knitted big-pants that go on over a baby's nappy - originally the cloth diaper that goes on over the muslins... it all went out when disposables came in, but some of my old pre-war knitting books have patterns for pilches just like modern "soakers" patterns... 

Anyway, if you were making baby things, I think they'd come under the govt issued layette, certainly for the first outfit made for any one baby...   

As for DPNs - it's actually almost impossible to drop stitches off DPNs - seriously, it is very very hard to do it unless you are cramming too many stitches on, ie trying to knit a jumper on sock-needles... but DPNs make it very easy not to drop stitches  

A couple of months ago, I taught a friend to knit for the very first time - as in, when she took the DPNs out of the packet it was literally the first time she had ever touched a knitting needle... I'm so proud of her as we were doing this over Zoom, and she had to start by casting-on, onto DPNs and then joining to knit in the round, without ever having knitted a stitch - and she did it!!!! 

But she's racing onwards now, already - we started with Aran weight and iirc 4.5mm DPNs, and she cast on 40 and did a k2p2 rib and then cast off, and did another one, and now has cosy warm ankles with her hand-knitted legwarmers, and is making a second pair, maybe a third by now, as presents, and pondering hats...

MrsCD

@florianatwobob
https://hearthookhome.com/texting-gloves-pattern/
This looks quite easy to do. I haven't tried it but reading through, it seems OK.
Or this one
https://hearthookhome.com/sock-yarn-gloves-free-crochet-pattern/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=pinterest&utm_campaign=tailwind_tribes&utm_content=tribes&utm_term=478072458_16801732_430408

CAFCGirl

Pair of balloon style jeans in a dark acid wash sort of denim, £3.95 from Sue Ryder.
My short little legs are very happy that they are short enough in the leg to only need the cuffs turned over once and they actually look nicer as turn ups.

Coupon free so very happy there

PipneyJane

@Laura_Elsewhere - those mittens look interesting.  I have knitted something similar but with fingers, based on a pattern from a different blog, The Subway Knitter.  This link is direct to her pattern.

In the meantime, here’s a photo of my basic Fingerless Mitts.  The postal scale at work told me they weighed exactly 32 grams.  Note, there are not divided into fingers (a la Ebenezer Scrooge), because I use them at work and fingers make typing more difficult, but that didn’t stop a favourite colleague calling them my “Ebenezer’s”.



The full pattern for these Fingerless Mitts is free on my blog.  (I am assuming we still are not allowed to link to our own blogs.  Mine is my MSE name dot blogspot dot com.  These are filed under patterns.)

- Pip



ETA:  Is it just me, or do the new forums refuse to load photos from an iPad?  I have tried multiple times this morning and ended up logging into my laptop to load the above photo.

florianatwobob

Thank you for those @MrsCD they look just the ticket and crocheting in the spiral holds no fear for me  

TwibbleDee

PipneyJane said:

@Laura_Elsewhere - those mittens look interesting.  I have knitted something similar but with fingers, based on a pattern from a different blog, The Subway Knitter.  This link is direct to her pattern.

In the meantime, here’s a photo of my basic Fingerless Mitts.  The postal scale at work told me they weighed exactly 32 grams.  Note, there are not divided into fingers (a la Ebenezer Scrooge), because I use them at work and fingers make typing more difficult, but that didn’t stop a favourite colleague calling them my “Ebenezer’s”.



The full pattern for these Fingerless Mitts is free on my blog.  (I am assuming we still are not allowed to link to our own blogs.  Mine is my MSE name dot blogspot dot com.  These are filed under patterns.)

- Pip



ETA:  Is it just me, or do the new forums refuse to load photos from an iPad?  I have tried multiple times this morning and ended up logging into my laptop to load the above photo.

I love those mitts!  And I’m going to test with a picture from my iPad.