Fingerless Mitt Experiment

Pattern: Steph's Fingerless Gloves

Yarn: Opal sock yarn, 75% wool, 25% nylon

Color: Dreamcatcher 1235

Needles: Addi Turbo #1

Gauge: 8 stitches/inch, 10 rows/inch

Last week I bought a cheap bookshelf for my yarn stash bins. Now I can get into the bin I want without having to stack and unstack other bins to get to it.

Of course this lead to looking at what was in those bins. My stash is very modest compared to most knitters and at least half of it is sock yarn. I love my sock yarn. My hope is to knit every last skein of it.

One stash challenge I have is an overflowing bin of little balls of left over sock yarn. I'm producing them quicker than I'm using them up. Mostly I don't know what to do with them. They're too big to toss out and too little to use for anything I want to knit. (That "I want to knit" is very important. I know there are patterns that use up little balls of yarn. I've never seen one I could get excited about.)

One of the CIC requests is fingerless mitts for the caregivers. Thinking I might be able to get a pair of mitts out of a pair of left over balls of sock yarn, I gave it a try.

The arm cuffs are some leftover Opal UNI-Solid blue. The rest of the mitts are Opal Dreamcatcher. There was just enough yarn to finish, even though the Dreamcatcher socks were a small size knit on 56 stitches.

This pair of mitts knit exactly to the pattern weighs 1.6 ounces.

The verdict: I may knit a few more pair of fingering weight mitts but never enough of them to make a dent in my little ball inventory.