Welcome to a week with Finn, a yarn that is 50% practicality and 50% luxury.
A lovely box of Finn yarn, ready for me to explore
Finn‘s practical side is its 50% acrylic content. This enables this yarn to be machine washed on a cold cycle and, under strong light, it also shows a subtle shimmer. Its luxury side has two portions: 25% merino wool and 25% alpaca! These fibers cause a “dry flat” recommendation on the care label, but they make Finn PERFECT for making the project I want to try this week — gloves!
Normally, I’m not inclined to make gloves but when I first saw the range of 12 colors available in Finn, the 5 colors I chose “told” me they wanted to be a lovely, luxurious pair of Fair Isle gloves! I’ll also include pattern revisions to make a pair of “two-compartment gloves,” also known as mitts.
Under the LED light from my Sure lamp, the sheen of Finn can be seen.
Often, gloves are made of fine yarn such as sock or fingering weight yarn. Finn is a little thicker: at 24 stitches to 4″/10cm using US 4 [3.5mm] needles, Finn is classed as a sport weight yarn. Each 50 gram ball has 230 yards [210 meters], so gloves made with Finn will work up just a titch more quickly than sock or fingering weight yarn.
To meet the recommended gauge, the ball band calls for US 4 [3.5mm] needles. Normally, I have to go up a size to achieve 24 sts to 4″ using that size of needle, and Finn was no exception: my gauge was bang-on when I used US 5 [3.75mm] needles!
We’ll explore this more in the next post, when we work with samples and talk about gauge and ease. The following day we’ll do some swatches using some sample Fair Isle charts. On Thursday, I’ll roll out the pattern for gloves along with some advice about construction, and on Friday, we’ll do our mitten modifications. I hope you’ll stay with me for this journey!
This is part 1 of 5 in this series.
Go to part 2: Finn and tension and negative ease
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