Project Cursed Sunset
🌅 Knitting some extra-long wristwarmers with more trouble than expected.
After I finished my Hedgerow wristwarmers, I wanted to knit a pair for myself, but I didn't have any suitable yarn on hand. So I decided to just grab something from my stash and improvise some very basic wristwarmers. Sometimes it's fun to make up a pattern as you go along (and sometimes it's not). I wanted to make them extra long and snug to avoid draughts creeping up my sleeves.
I knit the left-hand one first and it went very smoothly. I decided to just do a basic KFB to increase for the thumb gusset, which created a noticeable "seam" on the palm side, but didn't look bad.
The right-hand one was a real pig. I managed to snap three different wooden DPNs through carelessly leaving the project lying around on the sofa and then squashing it, which meant I had to go out and buy some metal ones. (If you think I also learned my lesson about not accidentally sitting on my knitting, I did not – these ones just jabbed me in the leg instead, which was preferable.) I also could not work out what increase would best mirror the KFB, so I tried and frogged several different gussets, which was a pain. Eventually I settled on SKL and was happy with the result.
The yarn was a random acrylic/wool blend from my stash with a nice dusk palette. The colours look better in person.
My improvised pattern
I wrote this down as I went so the second one would match. I'm sharing it for interest, but I genuinely would not recommend following it. Just go on Ravelry and find something else. I beg you.
But if you must... use whatever DK yarn you have in the house.
- CO 56 stitches on 2.5mm needles. I used Jeny's surprisingly stretchy cast-on, which was took a little time to get my head around – this video cleared it up.
- Knit 1x1 rib for 16cm.
- Add a stitch marker after the first stitch.
- Continuing 1x1 rib, increase every round until there are 21 stitches before the marker.
- For left wristwarmer, KFB on first stitch of the pre-marker range.
- For right wristwarmer, SKL on last stitch of the pre-marker range.
- Put the 21 stitches on a stitch holder.
- Close the gap across the non-thumb stitches, adding a new knit stitch to the new start of the row. (I just used KFB for this.)
- Knit the rest (roughly 18 rows??), still in 1x1 rib.
- CO.
- Pick up the thumb stitches. Start the row picking up a new purl stitch from the top of the thumb gusset so there are 22 stitches on the needles.
- Knit 1x1 rib for 9 rows.
- CO.
- Weave in ends (or procrastinate on it for ages because you also hate this part).
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