Aister Wester is a design I developed to use Aister Oo, a new Shetland yarn from Aister Croft in Cunningsburgh, Shetland. The name of the motif design plays on the Shetland dialect for east - aist (sometimes aest), and has arrows pointing in two directions. The arrows are differently arranged for right and left hands.

This pattern includes charts and instructions for a deep headband and fingerless mitts. Both are generously sized, and there are tips for making them larger or smaller. The headband is deep - 15cm / 6” - you could easily make it narrower by reducing the number of repeats of arrows, and having three or four instead of five.

I used approx 60g of Moonshine (natural white) and it’s possible that if you make your headband narrower, or use the contrast colours for rib borders and thumbs, you might find that 50g would be sufficient. For mine, though (and of course, I made swatches too) I purchased 100g of Moonshine, and 50g each of Holsas (heather pink) and Ayre o da Kames (grey). A 50g ball of Aister Oo is approx 142m, and it’s a 4 ply with a good body to it.

Both headband and fingerless mitts are worked in the round, and the mitts have after-thought thumbs.