My inter­est in fin­ger-knit­ting was sparked when I was con­tem­plat­ing what project to bring on my trip to the east coast. I did­n’t want my nee­dles and project to be con­fis­cat­ed at the air­port. A few knit­ters I asked, and even my good friend who is a for­mer flight atten­dant, assured me that they have either brought knit­ting nee­dles on the plane, or seen peo­ple knit on the plane. But still, my project was on 3.5mm straight met­al nee­dles… I did­n’t want to risk them being “mis­con­strued as weapons”.

A while ago I also bought Knit­ting With­out Nee­dles by Anne Weil of the beau­ti­ful blog, Flax and Twine. I tried mak­ing this fin­ger-knit­ted scarf in the book for a friend.

It uses a “join as you go” method that joins mul­ti­ple knit­ted strips togeth­er to make a wider fab­ric. So then I thought I can do some fin­ger-knit­ting on the trip, with some local­ly made yarn, and that would make some pret­ty spe­cial sou­venirs. Tak­ing hand­made to the next lev­el! :D

I used the “join as you go” method from the book and came up with these fin­ger-knit­ted fin­ger­less mitts :D

I made these while dri­ving through Cape Bre­ton Island. The wool is by East Anchor Yarns. I made them for my sis­ter. I thought they’d come in handy (haha) for dri­ving in cold weath­er. It would keep the hands warm enough before the car is ful­ly heat­ed up, and it leaves the fin­gers out to grip the steer­ing wheel. They fit my sis­ter well :D

And this is the fin­ger­less mitts in action! :D

Late­ly I made a cou­ple of head­bands / ear-warm­ers for the shop, which also uses a “join as you go” method, but slight­ly dif­fer­ent, and cre­ates sort of a ribbed fabric.

I based it on this tuto­r­i­al for mak­ing a fin­ger-knit­ted blan­ket. The instruc­tor of the tuto­r­i­al uses a dif­fer­ent fin­ger-knit­ting and cast­ing-off method. So I just took the gen­er­al idea and kind of made up some of my own steps to fit the fin­ger-knit­ting method I know. This was actu­al­ly a lot of fun to make, and very quick, so I’m hop­ing to write a tuto­r­i­al for it :D

And with the same method, I made a baby blan­ket! :D (for a fam­i­ly mem­ber, I don’t think she reads my blog :S) It’s very thick and warm. I used 1.5 balls of Bernat Blan­ket.

I like this method because the fab­ric does­n’t curl relent­less­ly inward, like the result­ing fab­ric from “join as you go” method from the book.

Using the book I’ve also made a cou­ple of bowls. They’re like soft nests. I’m hop­ing to use them at work to hold stones.

In some ways I actu­al­ly like the very tac­tile process of fin­ger-knit­ting more than knit­ting with nee­dles or cro­chet­ing with hooks. Espe­cial­ly when mak­ing some­thing for anoth­er per­son. There’s some­thing very heart­felt about lit­er­al­ly mak­ing every sin­gle stitch by hand. I look for­ward to shar­ing more about the head­band / ear-warm­ers! They’re very thick and warm as well.

Wish­ing every­one a great start to the week!