Tomor­row is the first day of Decem­ber! Thought I’d share a super cozy last minute gift to make :D

I’ve men­tioned this ear-warmer in a post before, and final­ly got around to tak­ing all the pic­tures to make a how-to :D It works best with bulky weight yarn, to keep the fab­ric soft. I think super bulky would turn out too stiff. Because of the way the knit­ted fab­ric curl with fin­ger-knit­ting, the ear-warmer/­head­band will also turn out dou­ble-thick! So it’s super warm :)

I used:

Bulky weight wool. I used the scrap yarn I have, but one ball of this will be enough to make one head­band of sol­id colour. 2 balls if you want to make one with a con­trast­ing colour.

No need for nee­dles and hooks, just fin­gers :) but you do need a tapes­try nee­dle for sewing the head­band together.

Notes:

I learned fin­ger-knit­ting and join­ing method from Knit­ting With­out Nee­dles by Anne Weil. She also has a pho­to tuto­r­i­al on how to fin­ger-knit here. But to save every­one the trou­ble of going back and forth between dif­fer­ent sites, I’m show­ing the basics of fin­ger-knit­ting in the how-to below as well.

The bind-off method is inspired by this fin­ger-knit­ted blan­ket video by Good Knit Kiss­es. The author of the video uses a dif­fer­ent fin­ger-knit­ting method than the one I’m used to, so I just took the basic idea and made up a bind-off method that works for me.

Basi­cal­ly, fin­ger-knit­ting pro­duces a long strip of knit­ting. For the head­band, we’re going to make 6 strips of knit­ting and join them togeth­er length­wise as we knit.

It might take longer to make the head­band if you’re learn­ing fin­ger-knit­ting for the first time. But with some prac­tice, the head­band took me a cou­ple of hours in front of the TV to finish :)

Ready? Let’s knit! :D

We first make a set­up row. Take your left hand, take the yarn end and hold it between your thumb and hand, then take the yarn behind your mid­dle fin­ger, in front of your fourth fin­ger, and behind your pinky.

Wrap the yarn around your pinky, take it behind your fourth fin­ger, in front of your mid­dle fin­ger, and behind your index finger.

Wrap the yarn around your index fin­ger, then take it behind your mid­dle fin­ger, in front of your fourth fin­ger, and behind your pinky again.

Wrap the yarn around your pinky, take it behind your fourth fin­ger, and in front of your mid­dle fin­ger, than hold the yarn between your index fin­ger and mid­dle finger.

Straight­en out the wrap­ping a bit, it will look some­thing like the pic­ture below, with the yarn end still held between your thumb and your hand, and the work­ing yarn tail between your index fin­ger and mid­dle finger.

Now, start­ing from your pinky, take the low­er loop of yarn, and pull it over the upper loop of yarn and over your fin­ger, so that you would have only one loop of yarn left on your fin­ger. Repeat on your fourth fin­ger and mid­dle finger.

Then take the yarn end between your thumb and hand, and swing it to the back of your hand between your index fin­ger and mid­dle fin­ger, like so. We’ve now com­plet­ed the set up row.

We now begin our first row. Wrap the work­ing yarn around your index fin­ger, from left to right, take it behind your mid­dle fin­ger, in front of your fourth fin­ger, and behind your pinky.

Wrap the work­ing yarn around your pinky, take it behind your fourth fin­ger, in front of your mid­dle fin­ger, and hold it between your index fin­ger and mid­dle fin­ger. The work­ing yarn tail will always rest between your mid­dle fin­ger and index fin­ger after each row.

Start­ing with your pinky, pull the low­er loop on your fin­ger over the upper loop and over your fin­ger. Repeat with your fourth fin­ger, mid­dle fin­ger, and index fin­ger. We’ve com­plet­ed a row!

Repeat the steps from “we now begin our first row” to “we’ve com­plet­ed a row” 39 more times. So that alto­geth­er we will have 40 rows.

Note on size: 40 rows fits me fine, since head­bands are sup­posed to be a bit snug to stay on the head, and because of the loose gauge of fin­ger-knit­ting the head­band will stretch. But the length of your knit­ted strip may also vary accord­ing to the kind of yarn you use or the ten­sion of your knit­ting. You can wrap the knit­ted strip around your head after 40 rows, and see if the ends will meet with a bit of stretch­ing, and if you need to add or take out a row or two. Or if you’re mak­ing it for some­body else, make the knit­ted strip a cou­ple of inch­es short­er than the per­son­’s esti­mate head cir­cum­fer­ence. I think an aver­age adult head is 22″ around.

As you knit, the right side of the work will be fac­ing the back of your hand, the wrong side of the work will be fac­ing up.

After the 40th row is com­plete, we now begin to bind off the strip. Wrap the work­ing yarn around your index fin­ger from left to right. Hold the yarn between your index fin­ger and mid­dle finger.

Pull the low­er loop over the upper loop and over your index finger.

Place the remain­ing loop on your index fin­ger onto your mid­dle finger.

Take the work­ing yarn and wrap it around your mid­dle fin­ger, from left to right. Pull taut (but not too tight) the work­ing yarn by hold­ing it between your index and mid­dle fin­gers. Pull the two low­er loops on your mid­dle fin­ger over the upper loop (work­ing yarn loop) and over your mid­dle finger.

Trans­fer the remain­ing loop on your mid­dle fin­ger onto your fourth finger.

Wrap the work­ing yarn around your fourth fin­ger, from left to right. Pull taut the work­ing yarn tail by grip­ping it between your index and mid­dle fingers. Pull the two low­er loops on your fourth fin­ger over the upper loop and over your fourth finger.

Trans­fer the remain­ing loop on your fourth fin­ger to your pinky. Wrap the work­ing yarn around your pinky, from left to right. Pull taut the work­ing yarn tail by grip­ping it with your index and mid­dle fin­gers. Pull the two low­er loops on your pinky over the upper loop and your pinky.

You will have one remain­ing loop left on your pinky.

With­out turn­ing the knit­ted piece, trans­fer the loop on your pinky to your index fin­ger, with the right side of the work fac­ing you, posi­tioned like the pic­ture below.

We are now knit­ting the sec­ond strip, and join­ing it to the first strip as we knit. Wrap the work­ing yarn around your fin­gers as usu­al to knit one row.

Then, posi­tion the knit­ted strip and your hand like the pic­ture below. Note that the right side of the knit­ted piece is still fac­ing up.

Insert your index fin­ger from under the loop into the out­er­most loop of the sec­ond row from your hand — the high­light­ed loop in the pic­ture below.

You will now have two loops on your index finger.

Then wrap the work­ing yarn around your fin­gers as usu­al to knit the row. When you get to your index fin­ger, pull the two low­er loops over the upper loop.

And in every row here­after, before wrap­ping the work­ing yarn around your fin­gers to knit the row, insert your index fin­ger into the out­er­most loop of the knit­ted strip — the high­light­ed loops in the pic­ture below.

When the sec­ond strip is com­plete, bind off as shown before, with one loop remaining.

If you’re mak­ing a sol­id colour head­band, you can con­tin­ue knit­ting until you have 6 knit­ted strips alto­geth­er. If you’d like a con­trast­ing colour, change colour after knit­ting the first 2 strips, as follows.

Make a loop with new colour and place loop in the work­ing loop, like so.

Tie the yarn end of the new yarn to the work­ing yarn tail of the pre­vi­ous colour. You might want to put a pen into the new yarn loop to sta­bi­lize it when tying. Cut off the pre­vi­ous colour.

Then knit with new yarn and join it to the pre­vi­ous­ly knit­ted strip, as shown before. Knit two strips with the new yarn. Then change to pre­vi­ous colour, and knit two strips.

After bind­ing off the 6th strip, leave a long tail for sewing, and cut off yarn. Pull the yarn end through the work­ing loop to fas­ten off.

Now we sew the head­band togeth­er. With wrong side fac­ing, sew the two short ends of the head­band togeth­er using a loose mat­tress stitch. Because of the loose gauge of fin­ger-knit­ting, some stitch­es are going to be quite loose. Ensure that your nee­dle is pass­ing through two strands of yarn on each side in each stitch.

After sewing the seam togeth­er, don’t fas­ten off. Pull the sewing yarn tight to cinch the seam. Turn piece right side out. Wrap the sewing yarn firm­ly around the mid­dle a cou­ple of times, with the top and bot­tom edges of the head­band fold­ing into the cen­tre, like so.

Fas­ten off the sewing yarn by tying it to the begin­ning yarn end. Weave in ends.

Now we make the small strip in the mid­dle of the cinch. Fin­ger-knit a piece that is 6 rows long, and bind off, leav­ing a long tail for sewing.

Wrap the piece around the cinched mid­dle of the head­band, sew the ends of the small piece togeth­er, then sew through all lay­ers of the head­band a cou­ple of times through the mid­dle. Fas­ten off by tying the sewing yarn tail to the begin­ning yarn end of the small knit­ted piece in the middle.

And we’ve done it! A dou­ble-thick, super warm, (lit­er­al­ly) hand­made ear-warmer! :D

I hope my pho­tos are clear. But if you have any ques­tions, please feel free to leave a com­ment below and I will try my best to explain, and oth­er vis­i­tors will ben­e­fit from your ques­tions too, so don’t be shy :)

Wish­ing you a hap­py week!