In Which the Pirate Knits Something Functional.

I’ve been going out for runs before work, because it’s been too hot in the afternoons. The other day I was all dressed and ready to go and… it was only 47 degrees out, so that was a nope. I’m going to need to come up with ways of keeping warm if I want to keep going out in the mornings! Since my hands get cold easily, I thought I’d begin with a pair of armwarmers. The idea of the Watch Me! armwarmers comes from wanting to be able to see and control my sportswatch without having to mess around with sleeves and other layers while I’m trying to run in a straight line.

Look, it’s got a little window for my watch! …which took several tries to size appropriately, but eventually I figured out what I was doing. The part of the armwarmer that goes over the watch band is seed stitch, and then it goes back to ribbing for the rest of it.

Getting the thumb gusset right was another challenge. I needed to adjust several times; I tried different types and rates of increases and liked none of them. Finally, I decided to just let it grow out of one of the ribs, and that worked well.

The next challenge was figuring out how many stitches to set aside for the thumb, and how many to dedicate to the hand – most of the glove/armwarmer patterns that I have in my library have the same number of stitches on the wrist as on the hand, but my wrist is only 6″ around and my hand is about 7.5″ around, so I needed to come up with some more stitches to keep my hand from getting squashed. I cast on a few extra after I set the thumb stitches aside, but I think if I make another pair of these I’ll add even more. (Or knit the hand portion in stockinette, rather than in rib – that would probably work, too.)

And then, of course, the inevitable challenge of picking up stitches for the thumb in order to leave the smallest holes possible between thumb and hand! I used the tail to sew up the little gaps that remained.

I took very careful notes as I knit so that I’ll be able to duplicate my work. The right-hand armwarmer won’t have the opening for a watch, of course, so I’ll probably continue the ribbing instead of putting the seed stitch band in. But the notes will be very helpful when it comes to the thumb gusset!

The Watch Me! armwarmers are knit in Patons Kroy Sock FX, which is a heavier-than-standard sock yarn, on size 2 needles. The colourway is “Cascade Colors” and I absolutely love the teals and grays. I could easily see knitting a whole sweater out of this, actually, though I might try a swatch on size 3 needles to see if I can get a slightly more drapey fabric without it being too loose.