Osborn Fiber Studio

My hubby and I have a little tradition that started our first Christmas together. I made him a hat. He loved it so passionately that the next Christmas I made him another one. By then he was knitting too, so he made me a hat. Every year, we have made each other hats for Christmas. But you only need so many hats, so in the last couple of years, we’ve asked each other, “What would you like your hat to be this Christmas? This year, Jared wanted his hat to be a pair of gloves.

I searched and searched Ravelry, and I could not find a pattern that struck me as “just right” for a special project for my hubby. Frustrated, I started doodling. The doodle turned into a stitch pattern, and the stitch pattern turned into these gloves.

The stitch pattern makes use of a technique called Bavarian twisted stitching; this involves one-stitch cables and twisting all the knit stitches. It makes for awfully sharp-looking patterns. The losenge-like shapes reminded me vaguely of resistors and transistors in the old electrical engineering set I used to experiment with. Thus, a pun was born, and Cold Resistors twined their way across eight chilly fingers.

Yarn Review: Since we are being particularly economical this Christmas, in addition to choosing the item, we also knit each others’ gifts from each others’ stash. During our trip to RI last summer, Jared had fallen hard for some very woolly marled yarn from “Bartlettyarns, Inc.” and bought 2 skeins. Jonne, the shopkeeper, told us how he had visited the mill, wherein they still use a mule to run the machinery – hence, “mulespun.” Jared suggested the yarn would make good gloves. By Jove, he was right. And as I suspected, the twisted stitching showed off this woolly stuff marvelously.

I mentioned to Jared, somewhere mid-project, that the gloves would not take up even one of the two skeins he’d purchased. He knew this, he said, and mentioned that maybe next year the other skein could make a hat. Of course, my twisted little brain took that as a challenge. Next year? Bah!

It was easy enough to incorporate the same pattern into a hat. The real fun came in designing the crown. With little watchcaps still on the brain, I took a similar tack, making the “X” shape even more defined by leaving a two-purl valley in the middle. It looks marvelously architectural, in my never-too-humble opinion. And it actually fits him! My ambitions in previous years left my enduring husband with hats too thin, too floppy, or too big; this one Actually Fits. I knit it down very tight (as is traditionally done with Bavarian twisted stitching), so it’s a very dense, warm fabric.

I took notes as I went along, as I was becoming more and more pleased with the results. So now, after long labor, this little whim has become a Proper Pattern. I give you Cold Resistors: the e-book! You may, of course, buy the patterns individually if you only want one. The hat is sized for an average adult (21-22″ head) and the gloves for medium adult male hands, but instructions are included for adjusting length or gauge to fit any adult. I hope you like these as much as my hubby does!