I was writing patterns for a workshop when it occurred to me that the knitters with less experience with stranded color work might need a practice piece.

The piece needed to be something relatively small, so they could make progress on it during the class and have enough of the characteristics of the larger headband and hat projects to act as a good basis for moving on to more complicated designs.

I thought of Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Swatch Cap instructions: cast on 80 - 100 stitches and try out your pattern before starting a sweater. Since the hat and headband were scaled down from a sweater, perhaps something scaled down from a hat would work. Thus, cuffs.

The color work pattern is easy to work from written instructions. I’ve included a chart, so that beginning chart readers can compare their work to the chart and see how the two relate. The ability to read a chart is not required for this project.

The yardage given is the total for two cuffs. The cuffs can easily be made of stash buster yarns.