When you live in a cold climate it’s all about layering. Until last winter I had thought that legwarmers, however, needed to remain in dance studios or revivals of the movie Flashdance. It was our daughter’s second grade classroom that changed my mind. For some reason her classroom was unbearably hot in the winter, which meant that she was constantly going back and forth between a 75-degree classroom and a 20-degree or colder playground and bus stop. As an experiment I bought a cheap pair of legwarmers off the sale cart at Target to see if having an removable layer on her legs would help her acclimate back and forth between the temperature extremes. The legwarmers also became helpful under her choir robe when dress shoes wouldn’t accommodate thick socks. I was sold.

For Christmas this year, I decided to knit some nicer legwarmers. Knowing how much use they’d get I ordered superwash wool yarn so they would be able to go in the laundry with everything else. I got Cascade 220 which works well with #7 for the ribbing and #8 needles for the base. I’ve sized these to fit a tall 8-year old but they could fit a wide range of legs and ages is my guess.

Pattern for Lickety Split Legwarmers

One ball of Cascade 220 in color A

One ball of Cascade 220 in color B

#7 dpns for ribbing

#8 dpns for base

Cast on 44 stitches with color A yarn and divide stitches among three #7 dpns.

Making sure that the stitches are not twisted, join together and begin k2p2 ribbing. Continue ribbing for 2″.

Switch to #8 dpns and begin knitting with color B. Continue to knit in the round for 6 rows.

Switch to color A and knit for 3 rows.

Repeat the stripes until there are 8 stripes of color A and 9 stripes of color B. At this point the piece should be about 16″ long.

Switch to #7 dpns and color A. Resume k2p2 ribbing for 2″ and bind off.

Repeat for other legwarmer.