Monday, January 24, 2011

Free Pattern Review: Striped Fingerless Gloves

Sometime last week, I posted on my twitter that I'm taking commissions for crocheted items and I would be willing to do trades for them, rather than get paid cash. A few people responded and one of which was my friend Joanna, who asked for a pair of green and black wristers, which are also known as fingerless gloves. I have a pattern that I'm using for my own pair of wristers (which will be finished someday, I swear), but is for sock yarn. I don't have any green or black sock yarn. I do have a lot of green and black acrylic yarn, so I needed a pattern that worked with acrylics.

Enter FaveCrafts, which I found via internet search. A cool thing about FaveCrafts: they don't have just crochet patterns. They have knitting, paper crafts, candles/soaps and quilting just to name a few. Also, unlike most craft sites I've seen, they don't direct you to another site for your pattern/instructions. Everything is right on that same site, so you're not waiting for the page to load, only to find out you have to click a separate link to get to the actual pattern. Some of you may be asking why that's such a big selling point and I'll tell you: some people still have dial up. I don't personally, but I do live in an area where you either use dial up or mobile broadband, which means you have an alloted monthly GB download limit. I have mobile broadband. I also have other things to do on the internet, I don't want to be wasting MBs downloading a pattern, no matter how good it is. Long story short: I like this site.

Lets move onto the pattern, Striped Fingerless Gloves created by Berta Gilholm.

The Pros:
First off, this pattern is really easy. It uses basic techniques that most beginning crocheters know and the instructions are split into 3 (really 4, but keep reading) sections: Cuff, Glove & Thumb Hole and Thumb Area. Each section details how many rows should be in that section. Cuff has 18, Glove & Thumb Hole have 20 all together (look at the pattern, the thumb hole is a separate section, but the row count doesn't restart) and the Thumb Area has 4.

This pattern is super easy to customize; Berta suggests using a self striping or variegated acrylic yarn to create the stripes. I don't have any green and black self striping or variegated yarn. What I have is what once was a giant skein of black and two skeins of green, different shades; I did the striping myself and it was no problem at all :D

The Cons:
The only cons I have here are really just personal quirks; when I made the first glove, I freaked out because it didn't fit on my hand. After a massive worry over whether or not these too-small-for-me gloves would fit Joanna, I realized that I'd neglected to notice instructions for making a small and large sized gloves (the pattern makes a medium sized glove). The reason I had missed it was because it looks like an after thought, tacked off after telling you not to count the ch 1 at the beginning of the round as a stitch. Personally feel that it should have it's own header, but that's just me and I'm willing to admit that I may be the only one who misses such things.

Still on the subject of sizes, there are no measurements saying what constitutes as a small, medium or large. All I have to go on is that my hands are too big for a medium, but they do fit my mom okay. Hopefully Joanna's hands aren't bigger than my mom's.

All in all? This is a really good pattern; if you're looking to make your first pair of wristers, this is a good place to start. Over all score on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the best cookie you've ever had and 1 being the vegetable you hate the most), I'd give this an 8. On my scale, that'd be about a good burger from your favorite dive.

Oh, you want pictures? You'll have to wait then :D I'm not posting any until after the wristers get to Joanna in Chicago =D

Friday, January 21, 2011

I don't care what the Dough Boy says, I prefer Pop Tarts

Hello and welcome to the obligatory new blog welcome post! I'm Paxie and this blog is my blog. This blog is a blog about crafty stuff, because crafty stuff is stuff I enjoy =D

Okay, enough talking like that.

When I was young, I want to say seven or eight, I first learned to crochet. I don't remember who taught me, but I remember there being this stereotypical pink, blue and white variegated yarn and a crochet hook involved. I don't know whatever happened to that first thing I made, but I do know that I stopped for some reason. When I was ten, my great-grandmother Edna retaught me how to crochet; my first boss helped me learn a few things as well. Fourteen years later, I'm still going strong =D

I've tried making craft blogs before, but have never been able to keep up with them. Hopefully, this one will be better. I plan on posting projects I've made from free patterns found online, my own original designs and links to my etsy store. I hope you like it... I think you will ^_~