That first pair of gloves was so bad that eventually I decided to buy myself a pair of gloves. When I went looking for a pair, I discovered the concept of a mitten conversion unit. The pair of gloves I bought had open fingers, and there was this pita bread shaped thing, which could go over the fingers to make it into a mitten. This is very handy, since it means you don't need to take your gloves off in order to lock up your bike. However, before long I lost one of these gloves.
Now in between these times, I had bought myself a used sewing machine, in order to to sew myself a hat. Now hatmaking is another story entirely. If you want to hear about the hats I have made, you must email me. Having lost one of the gloves I had bought, I decided to make myself a new pair, this time including a mitten conversion unit. This pair I made entirely out of old jeans, an sewn with the sewing machine. An additional advantage of the MCU is that the ends of the fingers are the hardest part of the glove to make, so it is actually better in all ways to make a glove with a mitten conversion unit. Now, in order to sew the gloves with the sewing machine, it is necesary to sew them while they are inside out. This can be confusing. The result was that the first two gloves I sewed were for the same hand. I don't currently remember which it was. So I had to make a third one. By the time I made the third one, I was getting a lot more sure of myself, with the result being that in trying to make it fit just right, I made it too small. It fit, but it just wasn't comfortable. So I made a fourth one (all the while wearing the second and third each day when I rode my bike). This resulted in quite a satisfactory pair of gloves.
Soon, of course (within a semester or two), I lost one of this latest pair of gloves. When I replaced it, I added a flannel lining to the MCU, which was such an improvement that I had to replace the other glove, too, so that it would be equally comfortable.
Some time after this, I graduated. At some point, I lost both of my good gloves. As you may have figured out, losing gloves has really been the driving force behind my development of new and improved gloves. I took a year off school, during which I learned to crochet from my mom. however, I lived in Southern California that year, and therefore had no need of gloves. This time period was when I crocheted my afghan.
When I came back to Berkeley for graduate school, since I had misplaced my gloves, I had to make a new pair. This time I decided to crochet them, since crocheting is such a versatile method. I fully expected to have to make three of them before I had a working pair, but it turned out to be really easy! When crocheting you can backtrack as far as is necesary, and you can also try on the glove really easily, so there's no reason for the first glove not to work. As I was making the thumb of the first glove, I remembered how when I play guitar outside, my hands get so cold that eventually I have to stop because I can't feel the strings. So I thought that if I made a little slit in the thumb for it to sneak out of, I'd be able to play guitar while wearing gloves. It didn't end up working out that I could play guitar while wearing the gloves, since they are too bulky. But it did turn out that it was much easier to use my keys with my thumbs available. I added one more feature, which was a string attaching the two gloves. When I wear them, I put the string through the two arms of my overshirt or coat, so that I couldn't possibly lose one glove, and I couldn't lose either glove without losing my entire coat.
I wasn't entirely pleased with my crocheted gloves, because they were a bit too thick in the fingers, which made them a little uncomfortable. I figured that they'd probably be more comfortable if they were knitted, so this summer (that is, during the summer of '97), I learned to knit. Since then I have been enjoying knitting. I made myself some double pointed knitting needles out of bamboo skewers, and practiced knitting on a few socks (none of which turned out too well).
I knitted my first pair of knitted gloves in August of '97 (the same month my sister was married!). I currently (Oct '97) am working on a second pair, since the first one was not quite satisfactory. I hope to have a knitting page some time, but it doesn't seem worthwhile without pictures, since there aren't so many interesting stories about knitting as there are about gloves. Oh well. Oh yes, I should mention that the gloves are being made without a pattern, as is everything else I make (even food). It's more exciting that way.
This time although the rest of the glove was knitted, the palm was crocheted. This was to make it better able to take the wear it receives from riding my bike every day. Soon I hope to actually have pictures of my gloves, since I now have a friend with a digital camera.