Handwarmers.

While looking for handwarmer patterns, I stumbled across this blog by an Italian chick who has quite the handwarmer obsession. I love her designs and really appreciate that she shares the patterns. She also sells handwarmers in her Etsy shop for those that don't care to or don't have the time to make their own. Both of the handwarmer styles I tried for Christmas gifts this year were using or based on her patterns, which can be found in the Free Patterns section of her Creative Yarn blog.

The first pic is of Angela's Christmas present this past year - they're a knit/crochet combo pattern that has a soft, fuzzy mohair for the knitted, cuff portion and a mid-weight yarn for the hand portion. The other pics are of the style I made these for Meg and Jules. It's a straight knitting pattern working mostly in a take on my favorite stitch - she's calling the double moss (aka seed) stitch. Both patterns involve knitting/crocheting a rectangle, then sewing together lengthwise to make a seam and leaving a gap in seam stitches for the thumb.

I'll admit that it took me a couple of months this past fall to really figure out handwarmers. I initially tried increasing and decreasing to make them more fitted and struggled with the weight, doubling light-weight yarns or using a heavier weight, then experimented with smaller vs larger hooks. With the to-shape-or-not-to-shape question, I decided on not, since most yarns have enough stretch to make them fit nicely. The thicker the yarn, though, the more it might be nicer to have some shaping, since the fabric won't hang as nicely. For Meg and Jules, I ended up doubling hand-dyed, sock weight yarn from Kitchen Sink Dyeworks. KSD is owned by Mercedes, who used to own Knit Nouveau in Homewood - was my favorite yarn shop. She's online only now and devotes most of her time to hand-dying wool.

I'm not always (ok, rarely) good about taking pics before I send gifts, so the best I came up with for the Meg/Jules style were these pics of us goofing off. One is of Meg (donning handwarmers) and me at our Elementary School... oh, the nastalgia - we all walked there from my grandmother's house. The other is of Jules stylin' it up with her handwarmers when they were on a hike. Oh yeah. There isn't a long handwarmer season in Phoenix, but these globetrotting girls will have plenty of handwarmer appropriate weather in other places.