My son asked for a pair of gloves. I’ve never knit gloves but I want to try. What is the best type of yarn to use? The pattern that I want to use calls for a discontinued yarn in worsted weight. Wouldn’t that be too thick? I was thinking a sport weight might be better but since I’ve never knit gloves, I really don’t know.
Carolyn
Yeah, I’d think sock or sport yarn would be good to use.
I agree with Sue. I think doing small tubes with worsted would be hard, and once done (if I didn’t change my mind and make them mittens) it would be really thick between the fingers.
Here’s a pattern for knitting gloves sideways on two needles.
In the alternative, if you’re familiar enough with the discontinued yarn to choose a good substitute, it would make knitting them to pattern a relatively easy job.
What teens and the young twenties group likes is convertible mittens. Here’s a tutorial that shows you how to convert any mitten pattern into convertible mittens, the flip type kind. It’s very easy to do. The only thing different I did with this was to make thumbs with a slit in it so you can pop your thumb in and out for texting and digging out bus change. You make these on the back or inside of the thumb. After picking up stitches for the thumbs, I knit a few rows, then cast off the inside thumb stitches and recast them on in the next row.
As to the type of yarn needed, it depends on your climate. I have two sets of mittens and gloves here in Wisconsin. I use the lighter sport weights for spring/fall when the temps hit 30-40. The worsted and bulky weights are for anything below that. Although, this year the weather has been really strange. We’ve had 40 some temps during January, something I’ve never seen in my lifetime. It’s usually 60 degrees colder. From what I’m reading online in my weather forum, the whole country is experiencing this strange mild winter. I saw geese flying north last week. Even they’re mixed up. You might want to go with the sport weight if your weather is anything like ours.
Okay. Here in Wisconsin in a typical year, this is the breakdown:
Early spring/early fall sport weights for outdoor wear
10-30 degree weather worsted weight
Anything below 10 degrees worsted weight and we layer with one of those magic gloves/small stretchy cheap gloves underneath to cut down the wind chill. No single weight yarn is going to be warm enough by itself, even superbulky.
0-minus 40 worsted weight, possibly two pair, and stretchy magic gloves. I don’t like the superbulky myself because they get too hot. You end up taking them off because you’re sweating too much. It defeats the purpose of gloves and hats. And they always get lost.
And that’s my two cents’ worth on the issue.