Susan Anderson-Freed - Colorwork Creations: 30+ Patterns to Knit Gorgeous Hats, Mittens and Gloves

When I was nine, my grandmother from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan came to our home in Green Bay for a weeklong visit. She brought along a set of double-pointed needles, a how-to booklet on knitting and a booklet of mitten patterns. During her visit, Grandma Enoch taught me how to knit. I fell in love with the craft immediately and made several pairs of mittens, the only thing I knew how to make at the time.

The only part I hated about knitting mittens was the thumbs. I wrestled with knitting those few stitches with the weight of the mitten body hanging down, threatening to pull my mitten stitches off their needles. The mausoleum of thumbless mittens in my basement is a testimony to my dislike of knitting the thumbs.

My attitude changed when my friend Matthew Hesson-McInnis gave my daughter, Jenny, a do-it-yourself high school graduation present. Matthew had created a pattern for men's gloves that began at the fingers and ended at the cuff. He wanted a similar pattern for women's gloves, and the beautiful silk and cashmere yarn he included with the instructions for the men's gloves was the only enticement I needed.

As I worked through Matthew's directions, changing the pattern to fit a woman's hands, I thought of the beautiful Fair Isle gloves and mittens I had seen in pattern books. Could I make these gloves and mittens from the fingers or crown to the cuff? Over the next ten years, I designed gloves and mittens constructed in this fashion. Matthew's original design, with its rounded fingers, elaborate gusset increases and decreases and little finger added after the initial fingers, did not lend itself well to Fair Isle knitting. Slowly, I developed patterns and techniques that worked with a variety of knitting traditions, including Fair Isle, knotwork and Sanquhar.

When I embarked on my glove-making adventure, I recalled the lovely Sanquhar patterns that originated in the town of the same name in Dumfriesshire, England. I loved the little boxes of pattern and initially created my versions of the four traditional Sanquhar designs: Duke, Roses, Rose and Trellis, and Drum and Cornet. As a Professor of Computer Science, I couldn't resist the urge to place new designs in those little boxes the number of possibilities was infinite. I added trees, stars and designs adapted from Anatolian sock patterns and Peruvian weaving patterns. As a cancer survivor since 1992 with an ongoing reoccurrence since 2004, I also designed the small bows so often used to signify cancer survival.

Once I constructed the gloves, I turned to adapting the designs to mittens. The patterns lent themselves well to mitten designs, especially when knit from the mitten crown down to the cuff. Salt-and-pepper rounds are used on the crown, and the Sanquhar patterns finish the mitten body. My friends and family encouraged my creativity by asking Could you questions: Could you make me gloves with fingers that end before the first knuckle? or Could you make me those flip-top mittens with a full thumb and a mitten hood? My usual response was, Maybe, and then I tried to accommodate their requests. The creation of fingerless gloves and flip-top mittens followed.