I haven’t done any knitting for ages and while I was looking through my knitting bag by the settee, I thought why not knit something for a change?! I normally knit in the winter, but it’s been so cold here recently that knitting has been really appealing to me.

I decided to have a real sort out of my craft room and found a pile of knitting patterns that I had forgotten about completely. I fancied making something different, but quick to make, and I came across a pattern for wrist warmers. Ideal for Spring and the current weather, and they don’t take up much yarn. An ideal project for using up some odd balls of yarn.

I started with a pair for me. I have a good stash of yarn, mostly double knit, and found some pure wool that I thought would be lovely to use. It knits up very easily and was so soft on my hands. (I was once told that lanolin occurs naturally in wool and that can soften skin – I tested this theory out in my previous life as an energy efficiency officer where I had a sample of woollen insulation and it was a great alternative to having handcream on my desk). The cold has made my skin quite dry recently so any help I can get to keep them feeling soft is appreciated!

Anyway, I managed to make up the simple wrist warmers very quickly and decided to make some more for my daughter as an alternative to gloves. I scaled down the pattern by using smaller needles and cotton yarn.

I generally enjoy the knitting but not the sewing up of my projects, so I always have a few projects in the bag waiting to be put together. But this time I set myself a target to learn how to mattress stitch seams together. I’ve always struggled with learning from a picture as I can’t convert the flat 2d picture into what I need to do in real life, so this was going to be a challenge for me. I found a small set of written and pictorial instructions for this stitch, which took me a while to fathom – including unpicking a couple of times – but I mastered it and can’t believe how amazing the seams look. I was so impressed I even took my work up to show my Mum who was equally impressed and has requested a lesson!

So here are the finished cotton wrist warmers I made for my daughter.

They were just what was needed for going to her dance class and they certainly attracted some interest. My daughter wants some legwarmers now to go with them!

Time to get back to the knitting needles and look for some interesting yarns and colours to put together!

Happy crafting
x