pebblerocker

Cleaning up my sewing and fabric department I found a couple of perfectly good T-shirts which I was saving to cut up into new things. They've been sitting there for over a year because it seems unethical to chop them up somehow. I got given them and wore them once or twice before deciding they were far too short and wide to be wearable, and almost certainly too oddly proportioned to be any use to anyone else. Now I wonder: are there people so much shorter in the body than me that these shirts would fit? Are there people who LIKE their T-shirts to barely meet their waistbands? Should I chuck them in the charity bin and find another source of fabric?

I would be causing more entropy by cutting up a T-shirt, with inevitable fabric wastage, to make something new out of it. I'm sure people would say the T-shirts belong to me and I can do whatever the hell I like with them -- people who live in a world of billboards asserting that one "deserves" chocolate simply by existing, who have never entertained a thought about the greater scheme of things. These T-shirts have become a huge moral conundrum to me.

On third thoughts, perhaps my inability to believe in people who would fit the shirts is rooted in reality rather than unimaginativeness and I would actually be doing the world a service by removing them from circulation. Imagine the frustration I could be saving an op-shopper who bought what seemed like a perfectly serviceable T-shirt and then found uncomfortable cold draughts around her middle. She might end up with the same dilemma I'm having -- or she might send the T-shirt straight to landfill.

Humph. The 1920s was the era of short skirts. Some of them almost showed the knee. I had intended to wear a skirt to this event before finding out it was themed, but I'd planned on something down to my ankles with thick tights under it. I feel very undressed and vulnerable in skirts, and as well as that it's sure to be friggin' freezing. Some flimsy little barely calf-length thing with nylons under it will be most unsuitable for the weather.

I've found some pictures of '30s dresses which come down to the ankle, and even one stylish woman in silk evening trousers. I'd be so much happier if I could get away with wearing trousers.

I have a pair of fingerless gloves and they're fantastic for keeping my hands warm, but I lent them to the boy to wear on the bus and my fingers have been freezing. Another pair would be lovely. How to achieve this goal? I can knit, just barely; I made bootees for my niece when she was born, with much running to mummy for help with mysteriously expanding ribbing and reminders on how to k2tog, and gloves should be only ten times more complicated, so I've been looking for patterns.

First I investigated a pattern for gaming gloves I'd seen in Cerise magazine a while ago. They look pretty simple, but they're not exactly gloves and they're crocheted, not knitted. Apparently crochet is easy to learn; I know how to make a chain, I have books with instructions, and there's a crochet hook kicking around in a drawer somewhere. This is definitely worth a try.

Then I searched the vast interwebs for other patterns and found that a huge proportion of what are labelled as patterns for fingerless gloves are something completely different, the same as the ones from Cerise: more like fingerless mittens than gloves, in some cases nothing more than a tube like a small legwarmer with a slit for the thumb. Easy to knit, but really not what I'm after and most misleadingly named.

What I really want to make is these lovely gloves. The pattern looks a bit beyond my current knitting capabilities though, with double-pointed needles and lots of fiddliness... but I WANT some.