Gloves are like socks in that not every pair will fit every hand well. There really are two issues in glove knitting to consider - the thumb gusset (if any) and where the other fingers start. I'll talk about thumbs next week.
I prefer glove patterns where all the fingers do NOT start on the same row. Nancy Bush wrote a great glove article in an old issue of Interweave Knits ("Gloves Galore", Fall 96 IK) and she recommends starting the little finger 1/4" lower than the other fingers.
My little finger starts 1/2" lower than my other fingers so I prefer to start the little finger and the fourth finger on different rows for the best fit. (DH, on the other hand, has fingers that start pretty much at the same point so I do things differently for his gloves.)
Another thing I like in a glove pattern is when each finger has a different amount of stitches. Everyone's fingers aren't usually the same exact width. My little finger is 2" wide at the base while my index finger is 2 1/2" wide. This adjustment in the number of stitches for each finger of course makes a color pattern on the fingers a complete pain but well-fitting gloves are worth it. Gloves aren't exactly the speediest thing to knit so you might as well take the time to make them fit perfectly.
I have future glove recipients trace their hands (like children do when drawing turkeys) in my knitting notebook and I keep those tracings to help me when it is time to fit their gloves.
I'm ready to start on my first pair of gloves for the booklet. It is going to have a patterned cuff but have a plain hand in a lighter color which will be easier to photograph and knit for those new to glove knitting.
I purchased some of Elann's Devon sport weight wool which is about as thick as I think I can go for gloves with the extra thickeness of the floats for colorwork. I think the Devon is a good choice and depending on my color needs, I may use this yarn for all the gloves in the booklet. (I also looked into the Knitpicks Telemark sport weight yarn but some of the stuff I read about it says it bleeds and that isn't acceptable if you're doing colorwork.) In my efforts to be better organized and provide exact yarn and color info in my patterns, I cut a small piece of each color of Devon yarn and taped it next to the color and number on the Elann receipt.
For needles for the glove project, I bought some metal 6" dpns in 3 sizes at Spin Blessing for around $3 each. I'd prefer 4" dpns for the fingers but 6" dpns should do pretty well for both the glove fingers and the hand. 8" dpns are really just too long for doing tiny glove fingers. I may buy more dpns at some point to check them out - look for a later post on all the glove needle/short dpn online sources I could find.
