Empire State Gloves

Empire State Gloves by Stephanie Earp

What is Being Made

The Empire State Gloves are an elegant, stylish pair of women's gloves designed with a sophisticated aesthetic inspired by New York sensibility. These are fitted gloves sized for a dainty women's hand, featuring a refined silhouette that combines practicality with refined tailoring.

Knitting Techniques

This intermediate-level knitting project employs stranded colorwork as its primary technique. Stranded knitting, also known as Fair Isle knitting, involves carrying multiple yarn colors across the back of the work while knitting with the active color, creating intricate patterned designs on the fabric surface. The pattern is constructed primarily through charts rather than written row-by-row instructions, requiring knitters to read the charts in both directions—left-to-right and right-to-left—as is standard in circular knitting.

The gloves are worked in the round, which is the traditional method for creating seamless tubular garments like gloves. Knitters should read all instructions thoroughly before beginning, as the chart-based construction and color changes require careful attention to technique, particularly for those new to stranded colorwork. Common pitfalls in this technique include uneven tension when stranding yarn and inconsistent floats on the wrong side of the work.

Stitches and Stitch Patterns

The gloves feature a stranded pattern worked over a gauge of 34 stitches and 36 rounds per 4 inches (10 cm) square. The hand portion measures approximately 9 cm (3.75 inches) across the base, with a length of 15 cm (6 inches) from the fold line to the crotch between the ring and middle fingers. The pattern uses a charted design that incorporates color changes throughout the knitted fabric.

Materials and Yarn

The Empire State Gloves are knitted using 4-ply yarn weight, which provides excellent stitch definition for displaying the intricate stranded colorwork. The pattern calls for:

• 1 x 50 g (220 yards) skein of Van Der Rock Stranded yarn in the main colour
• 1 x 50 g (220 yards) skein of Van Der Rock Stranded yarn in a contrasting colour

The 4-ply weight offers a balance between fabric drape and stitch clarity, making it ideal for detailed colorwork patterns. Appropriate needles for this yarn weight should be selected based on the desired gauge; knitters can adjust needle size to accommodate different hand sizes, with larger needles recommended for larger hands. To increase the length of the gloves, additional rounds can be knitted before beginning the charted pattern section.

Difficulty Level

Rated as an intermediate project, the Empire State Gloves are suitable for knitters with foundational skills who are ready to tackle stranded colorwork. While the knitting techniques themselves are not inherently difficult, success requires careful attention to proper stranding tension and familiarity with reading knitting charts in the round.