Saturday 9 April 2011

Warren Hastings Gloves


On a recent trip to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford I saw a couple of pairs of Warren Hastings' gloves apparently knitted for him around 1780 when he was Governor General of India.  Said to be knitted in Kashmir they are made in a very fine yarn with intricate patterns.

I've started a scrapbook of design ideas for gloves, fingerless gloves, mittens and fingerless mittens with a bit of wristies, wrist warmers and arm warmers thrown in.  So far I have made up a pair of fingerless gloves (based on the colours of a Heinz baked bean tin and the beans) and a pair of wrist warmers.  Both of these were very good as test pieces, but so complicated it would be impossible for me to write a pattern anyone could follow. I learned an awful lot from doing them, and gave them away as presents so nothing wasted.

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