Ladybird - Ladybug fingerless glove pattern – fourth in a series of bug gloves

Ladybird beetle gloves

The first bug glove design was a Stag beetle, a bug that I thought cool looking. The second bug glove design was a Weevil, a bug that I didn’t like. For the third bug glove design I chose the Scarab, a beetle worshipped as a God. The fourth design is a beetle I have loved for as long as I can remember, the bright, round and beautiful Ladybug.

Just like all of the other insects that I’ve researched, there are thousands of ladybird beetle species and not all of them are red with black spots. They can be brown with white spots, yellow with black spots, black with red spots, no spots, or many spots, and they all look adorable. Maybe its because of childhood nostalgia, memories of endless summers, the hum of cicadas and finding ladybugs on flowers. How many times did I put my finger in front of a ladybug and it would crawl onto my hand as if saying Sure, I’ll come hang out with you for a while? There was never any fear like with a wasp, or any revulsion like with a centipede. I would happily sit with a ladybug wandering on my hand for as long as it wanted. Cue up fuzzy edges on the memory picture and old-timey Louis Armstrong songs in the background…

Ladybug on hand

All grown up and I still love ladybugs, for the same reasons as when I was a kid.  They are so darn cute! And of course, I adore them for all new reasons that I was previously unaware of like their voracious appetite for aphids and scaley bugs, the bane of my garden. Where I used to mow down all of the spent flowers and rake up all the fallen leaves in fall, now I leave them where they lay until late spring, both saving myself a whole lot of work when its starting to get cold outside, but more importantly giving the ladybugs (and others) places to hibernate over winter. Nature is amazing. I’m in the burbs, surrounded by boxy houses (just like mine), postage stamp manicured chemical lawns, and miles of pavement and cement. Yet just by ditching the grass, and not “cleaning-up” my yard it only took a few short years for my garden to become a super lush floral haven for all manner of small critters. You can always find ladybird beetles somewhere in my garden and it still makes me happy every time I see one.

Ladybug gloves!

When deciding to do a series of bug gloves, I resisted the urge to do Ladybird beetles first. It was my go-to thought on bugs and I could see myself spending 6 months going down a nothing but Ladybug path, ladybug socks, ladybug hats, ladybug scarves, ladybug sweaters, 5 different kinds of ladybug mitts and gloves… Its pretty easy for us creative types to get downright obsessive. If I went down that garden path I would probably never work on any other bugs, so very reluctantly I left ladybugs as the reward for completing 3 other bug designs first. And I’m glad I did. The other beetle gloves I did were a lot of fun, stretched my comfort zone and when it came time to do the ladybug, my thoughts on how I would do them had changed. I ended up tossing aside my initial designs and opted to make the Ladybug as big as I possible could on short gloves – they are the star of the show after all. I hope you enjoy this Ladybug fingerless glove knitting pattern as much as I have in making it.