defeated by fingers -- why?

When I knit my first pair of fingerless gloves/biker gloves, I was so proud and excited. I envisioned knitting gloves for my friends and people actually told me they would welcome such a thing.

Little did I know that would be the first and only time I managed to do fingers well. I tried for months in 2007 to make another pair, and I just couldn't get the goddamned fingers to flow from the body of the glove. I tried winging it, I tried following patterns, I tried different yarn and needle sizes, and I just couldn't do it. I can't be having with fingers that stick out randomly, or bunch the fabric, or don't lie flat when the glove is lying on a table. Standards, I have them. And they make me crazy. (Sometimes I think I have standards solely to punish myself for failing to meet them.)

Making fingers just grow out of the body of a glove is one of those things that seem like it should be easy.

1. Divide the sts on the back of the hand by 4, jigger the numbers so the index and middle fingers have more sts, eyeball it. Once satisfied, place stitch markers and divide the palm sts using the same numbers.
   
   
2. Move pinkie sts to dpns. Knit to pinkie. Using new yarn, knit the pinkie in the round, casting on a few sts between it and the ring finger to make a tube. Knit, bind off, weave in ends.
   
   
3. Using your main ball of yarn, pick up stitches between the ring finger and pinkie and resume knitting in the round. Knit a couple of rows to stabilize the cast-on stitches.
   
   
4. Using new yarn, knit the ring finger, picking up sts between the ring and middle fingers. Knit and bind off.
   
   
5. Using new yarn, knit the middle finger, picking up sts between the ring and middle fingers and between the middle and index fingers. Knit and bind off.
   
   
6. Using main yarn, knit index finger, picking up sts between the middle and index fingers. Knit and bind off.

And yet, as simple as it seems, in practice, not so much. I got so fed up in 2007 that I didn't even TRY in 2008. In December, I cast on a pair of knucks, because they are knit from the fingers down. I've worked a pair before to test it, and it worked beautifully. I figure that if I can master top-down construction, it will help me reverse-engineer the process so I can figure out how to knit fingers from the body of the glove. I haven't touched them, though, because I remember how bloody defeated the last attempt at fingers made me feel.

Sigh. I need to work on them, though. I need to conquer this ridiculous problem, because I want a drawerful of gorgeous gloves for me and I want to knit some for friends. Fingerless mittens have been a nice stopgap measure, and I think I'd be more apt to give those as gifts because the fit is easier to manage, but damn it, I want biker gloves, and I want a lot of them!