Witchy Gotland Gloves

I’ve jumped straight to a finished project post today, mainly because I haven’t processed the fibre completely from a raw fleece so there isn’t a great deal to say about the fibre prep and spinning. I will get around to doing an ‘about Gotland’ post when I work with a larger quantity of this fleece in the future.

Background & Design

A couple of years ago I knitted a friend some long gloves inspired by Gandalf’s from The Hobbit and instantly thought they would make a really good base for embellishment. That idea sat in the back of mind for some time until I found the perfect combination of fibre. In my 2023 EAYF adventures I purchased some Gotland roving from The Threshing Barn; whole Gotland fleece usually holds quite a premium because of the gorgeous locks, so I thought this roving would be a good experiment. I began spindle spinning and plying the fleece during a university field course and finished it during TDF last year. Gotland has quite a long staple length and the prepared roving was quite slippery, so I found spinning from the fold gave me more control over the diameter of the yarn. Shortly after, I attended a local yarn fair where a vendor was selling small quantities of raw Gotland locks and I remembered my idea of embellishing gloves.

In a happy twist of fate I discovered that Stansborough Grey’s (the sheep belonging to Stansborough Mill in New Zealand who provided the wool fabric for costumes in LOTR) are a breed genetically derived from Gotland sheep, so I felt it was meant to be! While I waited for some wool to dry for my Victorian Jumper over the festive season, I cast on…

Making

I wanted to put my own wool-witchy spin on the gloves, so opted to add beads to the cuffs. The pattern was a simple stocking stitch with ribbed cuff knitted in the round, divided for the thumb and cast off in an Icelandic bind off. I used 3.5mm mini circular needles which I’d never used before and I’m not sure if I like them – they were fiddly to hold and had a tendency to make my hands ache. I might save them for if I’m travelling with a small knitting project as it was handy not having to worry about dropping stitches when putting them aside.

To jazz up the cuffs I decided to add little beads at random intervals. Since I didn’t know how many beads I would use, I couldn’t pre-thread them onto the yarn, so opted for the method of placing a bead onto a crochet hook and then hooking a stitch and sliding the bead onto it before placing it back on the needle to be knitted.

After knitting I washed and blocked the gloves before considering how to add the locks. I’ve seen various methods of securing locks from weaving/knitting them in directly to attaching them using a latch hook, but none of these seemed like they would be very practical for gloves. My handspun Gotland had seemed a willing felter during washing, so I wondered if it might also needlefelt. I placed the glove over a felting brush and used a crochet hook to pull the end of a lock through a stitch and then needlefelted the end of the lock to the glove. It worked surprisingly well, so I continued to place locks across the wrist line on the top half of the glove (I felt the locks would have been impractical on the bottom).

I’ve made a video of the process below and a special shout out to my wonderful friend leanagibsonphotography for taking some stunning pictures!

I am so pleased with how these turned out, they were such good fun to make and even more fun to wear (and I now want to add locks to the cuffs and collars of all my clothes!).

Happy Crafting!