I was reading in an essay in The Politics of Housework that gave some interesting perspectives on the history of housework. I was struck by how in Victorian years a man’s social standing was measured in terms of how much leisure time his wife enjoyed, and how the corresponding fashion for ‘ladies’ was for gloves. Gloves symbolised the protection of soft and unworked hands (rendered fragile through lack of use) whilst also demarcating the wearer somehow as one ill-fitted to work.

I pondered these ideas whilst trying to make shelves for the studio out of the timbers that came from the roof. I am not as good at DIY as I think I am and getting splinters and destroying the threads on screws appear to be my chief talents. But I love it. I love how effective I feel when I turn an old pile of discarded wood into something genuinely useful, or when something that was destined to be thrown away is given a new lease of life through a little effort and ingenuity (see this and this for other examples…) And if I’m honest, I am always just a little bit proud of the cuts and scabs and splinters that such exertions produce; they are a tangible result of my efforts and it’s much more direct than say the back-pain I experience when I have been working at the computer for too long.

Here are the beginnings of my shelves, comprised entirely of wood reclaimed from the old roof of the garage-now-studio. The wood has several woodworm holes that I intend to treat (though hopefully this time without inflicting eye-injuries on myself with it) and is very rough and warped, but otherwise strong and sound. I have inherited my father’s love of structural integrity and the shelves are vastly reinforced, involving a system of weight-bearing verticals, screws in the floor and in the central stud on the wall behind the shelves. I have also ensured that the bottom shelf will accommodate my printer in both open and closed positions, and that it will be approximately the same height as my desk, so that when the printer spews out paper it will flow neatly onto my desk and not shoot out onto the floor. In this photo you cannot see the main shelves, but only the batons upon which the main shelves now rest. You can however see my messy end-shelving with its idiosyncratic angles and residual roof-tar.

So I’m not a fan of the Victorian ideal of not using my hands, but neither do I associate gloves with a lack of handiness. Afterall, I have just completed my first pair of gloves and knitting them was definitely a manual task! Here are the new gloves pictured with my Woad plant. I am so excited by that little green shoot in the middle of the rosette!

These gloves have been as satisfying to complete as the shelves, using some leftover yarn from The River Stole knit in with some Fyberspates in Foxglove colourway. The project is on ravelry here but for those who are not ravelling, the details are as follows;

Pattern: Knucks by Pamela Grossman
Yarn: Mobair by Victoria Smedley in dark green colourway and DK Merino by Fyberspates in foxglove colourway
Pattern notes: I loved this pattern because its fingers-down construction meant I could use up absolutely all of the lace-weight mohair I had left over from the River stole. I initially started knitting these gloves according to a fingerless glove pattern I got at the S’n’B day in London last November from Fyberspates. But the flat construction of that pattern made for bulky seams and the resulting gloves weren’t a very good fit. Then disaster struck and one third of the way through knitting the second glove, I ran out of Fyberspates yarn. It seemed my project was doomed until Jenny from Fyberspates discovered a rogue skein of the foxglove colourway yarn and was able to post it to me! I finished the gloves but then realised I loved the yarn far too much to allow it to remain knit, as it was, into a less-than-perfect pair of gloves.

So I unpicked everything, carefully rolling all the yarn from each of the fingers into small balls. When I was done, I wound the remainder of the lace weight and the Fyberspates together until I ran out of the lace weight. I weighed what I had in total and set aside yarn for each of the gloves. I then knit up the gloves according to the Knucks pattern, making only a few adjustments. I took in a few stitches at the outer edge of the hand so that by the time I got to the wrist, I was sporting 28 stitches on my needles. I then increased this to 36 on the first row of the wrist-cuff, which I knit in 3purl, 3knit rib until I ran out of yarn. This gave me a lovely, stretchy, generous cuff and a neat, hand-hugging glove. It also meant that I used up all the lace weight – although I now have a small ball of Fyberspates to assimilate into some project or other! And I love the colour. I improvised some kind of crochet-based cast off which is what gives the glove their wiggly edge.

It’s amazing how much warmth a single strand of very fine mohair can impart to a pair of gloves and since I finished these, my hands haven’t been cold enough to merit wearing them.