Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Claire's Gloves: The Gunnister Influence

I know, I know, the title for this post sounds as though it ought to be the title for an episode of "Big Bang Theory". Yesterday I made reference to the Gunnister Mitts, those 17th-century gloves preserved on a body found in a Scottish peat bog. Incidentally, other interesting knitted items were also found on the Gunnister Man, namely a knitted purse and a hat. The more I look at these mitts, and at the various attempts to reconstruct them, the more I am struck with their simple ingenuity and elegance. Look at the way the purl furrows line up with the valleys at the base of the fingers. (FYI, the reason the original knitted artifacts are brown is from the acid in the peat.)
As I stated yesterday, the element of the gloves that I particularly like is their gauntlets. So, today I embarked on a bit of gauntlet experimentation in my newly-acquired wool/silk in the "Pebble" colour. (I refuse to use the word "beige"; it has such a negative connotation.)
Pre-blocking: looking good...


Blocking-in-progress:


Woops, I may have overdone things! You only really know when you try it out. Now you know how messy the design process can be. Two steps forward, one step back.