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Damselfly hat and fingerless gloves

Damselfly knitted cap and fingerless gloves

Having knitted the cardigan, I thought it would be nice to have a matching accessories set.

Maybe it is a bit over the top to wear all of this together. 🤔 Or maybe not 🤓 Hmm, well, I’ll have to think about it… Anyway, I believe everyone knows by now how much I ❤️LOVE❤️ Alice Starmore’s patterns and the glorious colours of the yarn. 

The pattern for the hat and fingerless gloves is available as a patterncard kit. The scarf is based on the cardigan pattern and my own calculations (see below). 

The kit also includes instructions and yarn for a beret and handwarmers, but I preferred to use the excess yarn from this kit and what I had left over from the cardigan for a scarf instead.

The hat set lacks two of the colours used in the cardigan: Machair and Whinn. I thought this a pity, and since I still had some yarn in these colours, I modified the colour sequence in the garter stitch bands to incorporate these two colours as well. 

This set is a good introduction to the more complex Alice Starmore patterns, since it includes quite a few advanced techniques but is not quite as daunting a project as a cardigan or sweater.

My notes on the pattern:

The cap

I like to make a set up row for the corrugated ribbing, i.e. introduce both colours in knit stitch, K2 in colour A and K2 in colour B, before starting the ribbing. That way you avoid having two-coloured purl stitches in the first row. 

I made the garter stitch band in Machair and Whinn.

Maybe it’s me, but I could not gather from the pattern what colour the decrease stitches should be worked in. I think I did it wrong in the end, using the pattern colour all the way up, but I am quite pleased with the result. 

The fingerless gloves

I made size small. While the rest of the fingers fit snugly, the thumb is 24 stitches in the round, which is a bit wide (at least for my thumb). Next time, I am planning to decrease 2 and make the thumb 22 stitches. 

(In the meantime I have knitted another pair as well as the Herald fingerless gloves. Scroll to bottom of the page to read an update on the fingerless gloves.)

The longest floats in the Damselfly pattern are 5 stitches long. I did not bother to catch them in the hat. But gloves are a different matter. You do not want your fingers getting tangled up in the loops every time you put on the gloves. So, here I would catch either the middle stitch or the 2nd and 4th stitches in alternate rows. Catching floats onto the same stitch in consecutive rows makes them more visible from the right side (the so-called grinning effect) and is to be avoided.

The scarf

To make the scarf I cast on 385 stitches. The scarf weighs 140 g and is 154 cm long and 23 cm wide.

The blue stripes are 16 rows wide and the first and last 5 stitches in these stripes are in garter stitch to avoid curling.

Scarf knitted sideways

I used the Icelandic cast off.

The advantage of knitting a scarf sideways is that you get perpendicular stripes when wearing the scarf. The disadvantage is that you only know when it is too late, whether your scarf will be long enough. It turned out just long enough, but I could have added another 15 sts to get a scarf of a length corresponding to my height, which is a good rule of thumb for calculating scarf lengths.

The tension is the same as for the cardigan (27 sts = 10 cm in stocking stitch). If you find that the math does not add up, you are right! This is because the garter stitch bands have a looser tension and they determine the length of the scarf. 

Someone asked to see the wrong side of the scarf, so here it is. Ideally, a scarf should not have a wrong side, but as wrongs sides go, it is not that bad, IMHO.

Damselfly scarf

Update on the fingerless gloves

In the meantime, I have made a pair of Herald fingerless gloves and a second pair of Damselfly fingerless gloves. I made the thumbs 20 stitches, and they fit perfectly.

The pattern of the Herald gloves is 35 rows tall, which means that the palm pattern ends in the middle of a cross. I added one more row οn the inside of the hands to finish off the crosses.

I made a second pair of Damselfly gloves, because I wanted narrower cuffs, like the ones on the Herald gloves.

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The Damselfly Cardigan

I find the Damselfly in the Northern Blue colourway one of the most beautiful Alice Starmore designs.

Alice Starmore - The Damselfly Cardigan

That being said, I am quite curvy and have short arms, so I chose to make some adaptations to the pattern. The challenge was to keep the general frame while changing the dimensions of the different parts. I am quite pleased with the result, though I did have to sacrifice the uppermost blue (Mara) stripe in the bodice. 

I also chose to leave out the top centre back chevron to let the beehive pattern stand out more.

I knitted the medium size with the following adjustments:

The bodice and yoke

I made all stripes on the sleeves and bodice 18 rows wide. Since I have rather short arms, I figured I did not need to make a wider stripe at the wrist.

However, for the stripes on the sleeve and the bodice to line up, I only had room for 4 stripes on the bodice.

I have quite a bit of a bust and I wanted the yoke border to really sit below my bust. Furthermore, I was concerned that the yoke band might flare. So, I increased the distance from the yoke to the armhole slightly and I knitted the yoke band one size smaller.

I made all the decreases on the bodice as in the pattern, but then continued up to the yoke band without increasing. I made the yoke band in size small. After attaching the yoke band, I increased to 241 stitches and continued in size medium. This way I got a slightly more pronounced empire line.

Much as I love that the original pattern only has buttons on the yoke, I am not comfortable wearing a half open cardigan, so I added buttons all the way down.

The sleeves

As usual, I made my own sleeve decreases, decreasing more steeply for the sleeve cap. I have found a set of decreases that work well with my shape and I am very reluctant to change them. 

The button and neck bands

I want the neck band to sit on top of the button bands, i.e. I first make the button bands and then the neck band, placing the uppermost button and buttonhole on the neck band. 

I always knit button bands separately. Subsequently, I pick up stitches down the front or around the neck respectively, and join the bands to the bodice using the three-needle method – without binding off. I knit another 4-5 rows in stocking stitch, and sew down the flap to cover up the raw edges of the steek.

The Damselfly Cardigan by Alice Starmore - Steek

I cast on 138 stitches for the button band, i.e. fewer than in the pattern. My garter stitch tension is looser than my stocking stitch tension and I did not want the button band to flare.

I made a shaped neck band, casting on 101 stitches, increasing to 123 after the first 3 garter stitch ridges. I attached it as described above for the button bands.

…and a couple of technical notes

I used 2.5 mm needles for the striped sections and a 3 mm circular needle for the fair isle section to get the right tension using 2-ply Hebridean from Virtual Yarns.

Since I had to make a steek anyway for the yoke, I knitted the whole bodice in the round. I am a continental knitter and knitting is considerably faster than purling for me.

I also knitted the sleeves in the round on double-pointed needles up to the armhole. The sleeve cap is knitted flat.

Whenever I had 5 stitches (or more) between stitches of the same colour, I would catch the float, making sure not to catch it onto the same stitch in consecutive rows. (If you do this, the floats may be visible on the right side, an effect also known as “grinning”.) Here is how I catch the upper and lower yarn respectively:

I always secure steeks on the sewing machine before cutting. The purist side of me does not like the idea of a polyester thread in such a lovely garment, but secured steeks a) are a necessity if you pick up the stitches the way I do and b) allow for much thinner steeks, i.e. less bulk.

I made the sleeve, armhole and neck decreases after the first two and before the last two stitches respectively. These stitches including the decreases I worked in stocking stitch even on the machair bands. 

Damselfly hand knit cardigan by Alice Starmore. Setting in the sleeve.

When joining the sleeves to the bodice, I do this by crocheting slip stitches through the middle of the second stitch of the row. (I always slip the first stitch, so the second stitch is the first “full” stitch and the one before the decreases.)

Damselfly hand knit cardigan by Alice Starmore