I’m getting back to knitting after wrist surgery.

The weather is gradually warming up here in Northern California, so I want to wear shorts, but inside the house it’s still too cool, especially in the mornings. So I had the bright, if belated, idea to knit myself a pair of leg warmers, using (discontinued) Louet Gems Opal in Sage Green.

However, knitting in sport weight yarn on Size 3 and 4 needles, it’s going to take me quite a while to finish (possibly sometime in June?), so leaving that work-in-progress (WIP) for the moment, I went into the stash and dug out the thickest yarn I could find: my Lion Brand Fettuccini (Original), in the Poppy colorway. This version of Fettuccini is also now discontinued; it’s a combination of acrylic, wool, and nylon.  I paired that with some Size 15 circular needles and started working.

It did go quickly; but I soon realized even with this fat yarn I wouldn’t finish for at least a week (given my slow speed and various interruptions). On top of which, I clearly didn’t have enough of one color to knit an entire legwarmer to the length I was imagining… let alone two!

So my long fuzzy legwarmers suddenly shrank down to become boot-toppers. Here’s what I did:

I cast on 26 stitches, 13 on each needle.
Needle 1: K1, (K1, P2) to end.
Needle 2: (K1, P2) to last stitch, K1.
Continued for 6 rounds, then switched to stockinette stitch for about 7 rounds. Then repeated the ribbing for 6 rounds and bind off using a stretchy bind-off.

This is a very fast and easy knit; I finished in a couple of days, but the project could easily be completed in just one day.

It’s nothing fancy, and it’s not meant to be — just something to cover the tops of my rubber boots, to keep out the cold and wet.  I haven’t checked to see if there are any similar patterns available out there; most likely there are.  And there certainly are much prettier boot-topper patterns (including the Kertasnikir Boot-Toppers, which are on my to-do-someday list) but this “pattern” just came from my own head. If anyone else wants to use it, they’re more than welcome.