Knitting the Essential Knitted Wristwarmers

The Essential Knitted Wristwarmer* is a pattern which has been on my radar ever since I first started knitting, it's a free pattern by Paintbox Yarns and the recommended yarn is their Chunky Pots*. The Chunky Pots are self striping yarn and I'd used the colour Vintage previously for a scarf. For this project I chose the colour Making Hay, which includes brown, grey and cream tones. I decided not to knit a gauge swatch, I know I knit quite tightly and because I have quite small hands I decided it would probably be best to knit them using the recommended needle size, as they'd probably turn out a bit smaller than the measurements the pattern gives and should therefore fit me better.

This pattern was the first time I'd tried knitting cables, which was something I'd always thought must be tricky, so although I'd had the yarn for a while it took me a few months to decide to actually try knitting them. It turned out to be pretty easy and just involved slipping stitches onto the cable needles and then knitting them back into the wristwarmer. If you've not tried knitting cables before I would encourage you to try it out as it's much easier than you might think.

I knitted these wristwarmers over a weekend and found they were very quick to make. I probably could've got them done in a single day if I'd worked a bit quicker, they definitely weren't difficult either. The pattern was easy to follow and pretty self-explanatory, I think this would make a good project for anyone looking to progress from making some more basic things like scarves.

I think my only criticism of this pattern is that it calls for a 200g ball of PaintBox Yarns Chunky Pots, I've got a lot of the yarn left so it would be useful if they stated exactly how much of the ball is needed, particularly in case anyone is wanting to knit these with leftover yarn from another project. I weighed my remaining yarn and still have 150g of the original 200g ball, I didn't have the correct gauge so probably would've used more yarn if I did, but even so, you definitely could manage this project if you have less than half of a Chunky Pot spare. When looking for projects to use the remaining yarn for it's tricky to decide which of Paintbox Yarns patterns using this yarn would be suitable, as most of them do just state to use a 200g ball like this one did, so it's not easy to guess which ones 150g would be enough for.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the finished wristwarmers, they fit me well and I really like how the cables look. I didn't do the neatest job of making them up so on one of them there's a bit of a corner sticking out at the edge, but it doesn't really bother me. I'm pretty happy with the colours, although I'm not a huge fan of the grey and brown right next to each other, so if I were to knit these again I probably would opt for a different colour of yarn. In terms of comfort, the only issue I've had is that when I wear them to drive I find that the edge of the thumb hole rubs my thumb joint and can be a bit uncomfortable, but that's more of an issue with this type of wristwarmer in general rather than this specific design. I've found them to be quite warm and I've used them a lot over winter.

I would definitely recommend this pattern, you might even have enough yarn in your stash already as you definitely don't need 200g!

*Affiliate links: if you make a purchase through this link I will receive a small amount of commission, this won't affect the price you pay.