1857 Gaiters
Jul. 12th, 2013 01:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
atherleisureWhen I saw this pattern a couple of years ago, I wanted these pretty gaiters. My excuse for them is Dickens of a Christmas, though my garter-stitch green wool gaiters are probably more serviceable for that. Still, these are prettier so if we have fair weather this Christmas maybe I’ll get to wear them.
Click to see pictures on Ravelry
Materials:
2 balls cardinal #10 crochet cotton (from Michael’s)
¼ sheet brown trim leather (from Michael’s)
Patterns:
I used a pattern from Godey’s Lady’s Book from 1857 posted at the Vintage Stitch-o-Rama blog.
Construction:
I knit my first gaiter to the pattern, excepting what I considered to be errors in the pattern. I think it fit my four-year-old daughter better than it did me. It was way too small both in length and breadth. I’m a pretty small person so it’s obvious that the pattern runs small. Mileage may vary if using a fingering weight wool rather than a #10 cotton, but since the pattern calls for #10 cotton as an option, I don’t know.
The second gaiter I knit I added two repeats to the width and quite a bit to the length. I added four cable repeats in length as well as an extra twelve rows (1”) at the bottom where the little gore is, which also gave me a little extra width in the gore, and an extra twelve rows in the toe. This gave me a gaiter 12.5” around at the calf and 14” long.
The third gaiter was knit as the second but I had to unravel the first gaiter to finish the third. Two balls of yarn was more than enough for two gaiters but not enough for three gaiters, not even when one was pint-sized.
The leather strap is sewn at the instep. It may be a little long, but I didn’t think I’d be able to get it over the shoe very easily if I made it much shorter.
Thoughts after wearing:
These need to be snug in order for the open work between the cables to show to advantage, and these are indeed quite snug. I think I’ll stick to wearing them with shoes rather than boots because I think boots wouldn’t do well through the ankle, at least not any boots I have. I wore them around one afternoon, and I think they’ll help a bit to keep the legs warm, though my wool ones will certainly be warmer.
There are a couple of things I’m not thrilled about. (1) The gaiters don’t really lay over your shoe nicely like they do in the pattern picture. There’s not really anything to keep them in place so they shift around a bit. (2) The gauge seems a little loose. The #10 cotton doesn’t knit up very tightly on the size 0 needles. As a novice knitter (even more novice when I started these than I am now) I just followed the pattern indications. Perhaps these would work up to a more reasonable size if knit in a wool that filled in nicely on size 0 needles. Since I already spent a great deal of time on this project, I’m unlikely to test it out just to see whether that’s the case.
Click to see pictures on Ravelry
Materials:
2 balls cardinal #10 crochet cotton (from Michael’s)
¼ sheet brown trim leather (from Michael’s)
Patterns:
I used a pattern from Godey’s Lady’s Book from 1857 posted at the Vintage Stitch-o-Rama blog.
Construction:
I knit my first gaiter to the pattern, excepting what I considered to be errors in the pattern. I think it fit my four-year-old daughter better than it did me. It was way too small both in length and breadth. I’m a pretty small person so it’s obvious that the pattern runs small. Mileage may vary if using a fingering weight wool rather than a #10 cotton, but since the pattern calls for #10 cotton as an option, I don’t know.
The second gaiter I knit I added two repeats to the width and quite a bit to the length. I added four cable repeats in length as well as an extra twelve rows (1”) at the bottom where the little gore is, which also gave me a little extra width in the gore, and an extra twelve rows in the toe. This gave me a gaiter 12.5” around at the calf and 14” long.
The third gaiter was knit as the second but I had to unravel the first gaiter to finish the third. Two balls of yarn was more than enough for two gaiters but not enough for three gaiters, not even when one was pint-sized.
The leather strap is sewn at the instep. It may be a little long, but I didn’t think I’d be able to get it over the shoe very easily if I made it much shorter.
Thoughts after wearing:
These need to be snug in order for the open work between the cables to show to advantage, and these are indeed quite snug. I think I’ll stick to wearing them with shoes rather than boots because I think boots wouldn’t do well through the ankle, at least not any boots I have. I wore them around one afternoon, and I think they’ll help a bit to keep the legs warm, though my wool ones will certainly be warmer.
There are a couple of things I’m not thrilled about. (1) The gaiters don’t really lay over your shoe nicely like they do in the pattern picture. There’s not really anything to keep them in place so they shift around a bit. (2) The gauge seems a little loose. The #10 cotton doesn’t knit up very tightly on the size 0 needles. As a novice knitter (even more novice when I started these than I am now) I just followed the pattern indications. Perhaps these would work up to a more reasonable size if knit in a wool that filled in nicely on size 0 needles. Since I already spent a great deal of time on this project, I’m unlikely to test it out just to see whether that’s the case.
