Powermetal Gauntlets

...are the secret name for the pair of armwarmers I just finished for Ari. Why? Because I was listening to these guys -


over and over again, while knitting the armwarmers/gauntlets. (I can't be sure, but it looks like the dude on the end has fake blood on his keytar?)

I think power metal may just be the most effective music for knitting...well, for me at least. It just makes me knit so much faster. I'm a knitting machine when Dragonforce are playing. Sweatshop owners should play them constantly to ensure higher productivity.

Oh, for those interesting in the actual knitting deets - the pattern is based on a wave stitch that I modified occasionally*.

Wave stitch goes like this: Cast on multiples of 12 plus 1
Row 1 - *k1, (k2tog) twice, (yfwd, k1) three times, yfwd, (slip 1, k1, psso) twice, rep from * to last stitch, k1

Row 2 - p

Row 3 - k

Row 4 - p

The way I did it on my armwarmers - start with an inch of 2x2 ribbing, and then *follow the whole pattern once through, then do four repeats of rows 1 and 2 alternately (cutting out rows 3 and 4 - the knit and purl rows), then do another repeat of all four rows after that.

Do that till you're at your desired length (I ended by doing 2 repeats of rows 1 -4) then cast on an extra 6 stitches and finished with an inch of garter stitch. The extra 6 stitches form a tab so you can add a button and close it.

If you like, you can do the whole thing on double-points or just omit the extra 6 stitches altogether. I did it because I like buttons. And dpns make me nervous so I knit it flat then seamed it to just under the garter stitch edge.

Oh, these ones are made to be fitted on the arm - I started with 3mm needles, did a third of the thing, then swapped to 4mm needles, did another third, then finished off the rest with 5mm needles. You can always make them on different sized needles for a bagger/tighter fit, or even just use one size of needles for the whole thing.

I might do another pair on dpns just to get over my fear of them. While listening to Dragonforce, of course. Or maybe even Manowar.

\m/