Remember the Cockleshell Gloves in The Knitter? Well, anyone who missed them first time round can buy the pattern now. There are extras, too. As the Juno Alice Sock yarn they were sampled in has such generous meterage I’ve come up with another glove pattern so that you can knit two different pairs of gloves from the same skein. These are the Silver Bell Gloves:

There are also instructions for Cockleshell Handwarmers:



Basically, you can get two pairs of S/M sized gloves from one skein or a S/M pair of Cockleshells and a pair of Handwarmers in either size. It might even be possible to get a M/L pair of Gloves and a M/L pair of Handwarmers, especially if you made the Handwarmers a little bit shorter (as written then have very generous cuffs for keeping your wrists warm).

I’ve also tidied the pattern slightly – this version has shaping in the thumbs for a better fit and a bit of dodgy adding up in the thumbs of the M/L size original pattern has been rectified. Yes, I know it’s supposed to be Spring and all that but with the weather we’ve been having in London the past two weeks you could still do with putting gloves on some days. And anyway, it’s never too early to start your Christmas knitting is it? Think how smug and organised you could be starting right now! Loop tweeted recently to say they have a new shipment of Juno in, and there look to be some beautiful colours. Buy! Knit!

The lovely Jen Arnall-Culliford, tech editor extraordinaire, has made a how-to tutorial for the little shell / cluster pattern on the yoke of the Corlyna cardigan. Isn’t she wonderful? Should any of you be considering knitting the Cockleshell Gloves and wondering about the stitch pattern on that – well, it’s the very same pattern in essence, just with slightly different spacing between the pattern repeats (there are more plain rows on the Corlyna yoke). Eagle eyed readers may also spot that single motifs of this pattern seperate the larger shells in the Low Tide Blanket. Yes, I admit, the same basic pattern (a few tweaks between designs) in 3 different designs. But it does look quite different in all 3, I think.

Anyway, have a look at how Jen tells you to ‘cluster 5′ right here, it’s an interesting and versatile technique and one well worth practising (albeit with pointy, slippy needles):




I love the bit where Jen talks about what needles you should be doing this on, I think she’s terribly brave working it on those lovely wooden ones. I tried on bamboo, nearly broke them, swore a lot and (for once, for I am almost surgically attached to bamboo needles) abandoned them in favour of some super-slippy metal ones with very pointy tips. In fact the Cockleshell Gloves were worked on my favourite ever dpns, which are metallic green and remind me of those anodised metal water jugs they used to have in school dining rooms over here in the 70s. Not that I ever ate school dinners, I was a picky eater and would rather have gone without but I did like the colours of the water jugs. The fact that this set of Susan Bates dpns is in the very same colours is, yes, the only reason I bought them. It just so happened that they came in useful years later (having never been used before) for the Cockleshells.



And whilst I am wittering on about the Cockleshell Gloves, the pattern should be available for them at the end of the week, both here and on Ravelry. The Juno Alice Sock yarn that the samples were knitted in has such generous metreage that I’ve also written a pattern for some Silver Bell gloves to go with the Cockleshells so you get two patterns for the price of one. Actually you get three, as there’s also a ‘pattern’ to knit the Cockleshells as handwarmers instead of gloves, guaranteeing that you can get two pairs of hand clothing out of one skein of yarn no matter what sizes you knit (well, almost guaranteeing). So watch this space.