As Sandy roared up the eastern seaboard, the daytime temperature in my neck of the woods dropped noticeably.

Gone were the 83ºF days of late mid-autumn, only to be replaced with days that have a more austere edge to them and cooler temperatures.

I first felt the impending winter in my fingers. I was walking my dog, Clooney, and trying to answer my cellphone, but to no avail.

I had sensibly put on a pair of gloves (as well as a coat, scarf, and hat), but gloves with fingertips are only sensible if you don’t have a smartphone. My phone, as smart as it is, cannot be answered with the swipe of a gloved finger.

In that moment as I failed to get my glove off in time to answer the phone, I realized why Ravelry has a Fingerless Gloves Fanatics group that is (as of this writing) 9075 members strong, and it was to Ravelry that I turned in seeking a super easy and quick to make pair of fingerless gloves that I could turn out in what remained of the afternoon.

A quick search of Ravelry’s pattern database brought me to Pam Daley’s free Fingerless Gloves pattern from her Learn to Be a Hooker series.

Having located a pattern I could use, I then had to track down some yarn.

I started by scavenging through my stash, and I came across this ball of yarn I purchased in California, circa 1999:

Using a Wraps Per Inch tool I picked up at the Southeastern Animal Fiber Festival in 2010, I determined that the yarn of undetermined weight was a very heavy worsted, bordering on an aran:

Because the yarn I was using was a bit heavier than what was called for in the pattern, I reduced the number of stitches in a row from 24 to 21, and the number of rows from 26 to 24. While I made errors from which I learned in the first glove, the second glove took all of 30 minutes (if that) to complete:

While I will have to gather the top of the gloves with either a knitting elastic (of which I have a bunch somewhere in my yarn annex) or a slip stitch around the top edge in order to get a less drafty fit, the pattern itself was easy to follow, and had I used an actual worsted weight yarn, I probably would have gotten a better fit.

However, even with the fit tending toward the large side for me, these fingerless gloves made my afternoon walk with Clooney much more comfortable, and I was able to answer my phone.