5-01-2025

Discovered an extra set of needles in the bottom of the project bag and realised that I had done the second wristband using 5.5mm needles instead of the 4.5mm I’d used for the first one, a month earlier! Unfortunately I had already cut off and darned in the ends and sewed on the buttons (and done another project to use up the remaining yarn…)

When I tried them on for photography purposes the difference between the two wristbands really was quite noticeable, so with a sigh I cut and unravelled the second one in the hopes that using the smaller needles would use a sufficiently reduced amount of yarn to allow me to re-knit it.

I left a fairly long tail at the start to allow me to use my large darning-needle again and had about half an inch left by the time I got back to the top. After fighting to get the end at least tugged through the loop, I then noticed that I had somehow managed to knit the top in pseudo-ribbing instead of moss stitch to match the other armband, and decioded that I really did need to unravel it again.

The third attempt somehow ended up with a long spare tail at the top (and the bottom now rather too short), and was also noticeably smaller than the original at the button end. Of course I had used the 5.5mm needles to reknit the top of the first one…! I really don’t think I can face unpicking and attempting to reknit the other wristband as well, not least since I am unlikely to gain enough extra on such a small area.

4-01-2025

Meda’s wrists are about the same size as mine.
Unravelled to a length of only 16cm from start before adding end points.
Found a couple of small brass buttons to use as fastening.

3-12-2024

I attempted Wristband 2. There seem to be mistakes in the pattern - I couldn’t get the setup rows to work at all as written, and ended up doing

K1, y.o, K1
K1, y.o, K1, y.o, K1
K1, y.o, K1, y.o, K1, y.o, K1, y.o, K1

and then fudging the increase to 11 stitches for the chart by working 2 purl into the first and last stitches of the next return (purl) row.

Row 6 of the finishing rows is wrong as well, since there are five stitches and not four on the needles at this point (confirmed in this case by the next row) - I just did another K1 at the end of the row. The end result appears to come out pointed rather than rounded as shown in the pattern photo!

Using 4.5mm needles, the width of the wristbands is nothing like 10cm with this yarn, but more like 6cm. Clearly not as ‘Aran’ as I’d guessed!

I knitted to a length of 20 cm (including setup rows) before starting decreases, for a total length of 22cm. I shall need to check this for size before knitting the other one.