Wednesday in the Works - Alice's Wonderland Tea Party Gloves

It's Wednesday, ClockQuirkians, and I have deemed Wednesdays to henceforth be known as "In the Works" day--the day when we will post about our works in progress, in development and under construction.  This week I want to talk about fingerless gloves--a favorite subject of mine.

I adore fingerless gloves.  Looking at them, wearing them and especially making them.  I've made some pretty ones before from a nice pattern I found here, but what I had in mind this time required writing my own pattern.  Eek!  I'd done that before on other projects, but this was more complex than, say, one of my amigurumis.  These gloves would require a thumb gusset and an opening for the thumb, a motif worked into the mesh and a vent at the wrist so that they would be easy to get on and off.  I'd used buttons for my previous gloves and had carried that over into my ruffle cuff patterns.  But I wanted a more open, flared wrist this time.  What to do?  Experiment, of course!

Trying things out and unraveling them when they didn't work was tedious, especially shaping the thumb gusset, but what really took a lot of trial and error was working the motifs into the mesh as I came around each time.  The 'A' was difficult, but I'm pleased with the result:

With the motif worked in and the thumb hole worked out (after many tries), the main of the glove was done.  I wasn't sure I liked the shape, but decided to go ahead and add the blue edging anyway.  What a difference it made!  It was just what I pictured.  There's a lesson learned!

For the other glove I decided to honor the Mad Hatter himself with a hat motif.

It's coming along nicely, but reversing the pattern for the right hand has turned out to be slightly more complex than I would have thought, presumably because you crochet from right to left no matter where the thumb hole needs to be!  I'm working it out though...

So keep a weather eye out for Alice's Wonderland Tea Party gloves in the Exordium shop, CQers, and have a very merry unbirthday!!

~Ellie, Maitresse de Crochet