From The Workwoman’s Guide, The Knit Armlet:
This is very suitable for school girls to wear over their arms or for old persons or people when travelling. They may be made as high as the elbow or up to the shoulder. Little children in severe weather wear them over their little naked arms to prevent them from chapping. Fine black lamb’s wool is most usually worn, in which case it should be well steeped in vinegar and then dried to prevent the dye coming off. For a grown up person, one hundred stitches will reach to the elbow. Knit plain as you would a garter, backwards and forwards, using large ivory or steel pins. About twenty rows, more or less, according to the size of the arm are sufficient. Sew do…
From The Workwoman’s Guide, The Knit Armlet:
This is very suitable for school girls to wear over their arms or for old persons or people when travelling. They may be made as high as the elbow or up to the shoulder. Little children in severe weather wear them over their little naked arms to prevent them from chapping. Fine black lamb’s wool is most usually worn, in which case it should be well steeped in vinegar and then dried to prevent the dye coming off. For a grown up person, one hundred stitches will reach to the elbow. Knit plain as you would a garter, backwards and forwards, using large ivory or steel pins. About twenty rows, more or less, according to the size of the arm are sufficient. Sew down the whole length, leaving an opening of about a nail long to admit the thumb, sewing beyond it to the end about half a nail or less. When worn they cling to the hand and arm, keep them warm, and look particularly neat. Some persons prefer them welted at the top and bottom, or ribbed the whole way.
As a reminder, a nail is a quarter of a quarter yard (1/16 yard or 2.25"), which is the suggested length of the thumb opening, and means the part of the armlet extending past the thumb slit should be 1 1/8 inch or less. Garter stitch flat and then sew up the sides should produce a similar effect to 1-1 ribbing in the round.
To turn this into a circular machine project, I set on a 1-1 mock rib (1L3 tension), hung a hem of 20 rows, then knit 62 rows, follow by 10 forward-and-back to make the thumb opening, and another 10 rows around, then binding off by hand. This produced an armlet about 12.5" total length, with a thumb opening of just over 1.5" and 1.5" covering the hand. I changed the thumb opening deliberately, because I find that ~1.5" fits my thumb very nicely, and so increasing the opening would just give more exposed skin without improving mobility (for someone with hands my size, at least).
| Two lengths of armlets: to the elbow and to the shoulder. |
The first attempt reaches just to the elbow on me, which matches nicely with the pattern stating that 100 rows = elbow-length on an adult. Since I intended the armlets for a child (to make a short-sleeve dress more weather-flexible), I then knit a second pair which was intended to go all the way to the shoulder, and let her choose which style she liked best.
For the longer pair, I set a looser tension (1L2), hung the hem as before, knit 60 rows, adjusted the tension back to 1L3, knit 50 rows, then reduced the tension down to 1L4 for a further 10 rows, followed by the thumb slit and final 10 rows. In total, the second attempt is 60 rows longer than the first, with a slightly looser knit over the upper arm and tighter knit around the wrist and palm. This sizing looked absurdly long coming off the machine, but made a comfortable shoulder-length armlet for a girl of 10.