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Home Made Knee Warmers

mitbmitb Posts: 78
edited January 2011 in Commuting general
I quite fancy some knee warmers so I can still wear shorts on parky-but-not-baltic days but I am quite skint and it's a pretty boring thing to spend money on, like shoes for work or haircuts.

So I wondered if anyone had ever improvised some? They are, after all, tube-shaped bits of material. Some may be super high-tech but as I see it they need to be warm, you take them off when your knees get hot so I have some untested theories for making some:

1) Cut down and use the sleeves off an old fleece. Comfy arm fit should roughly equate to snug knee fit. Should dry quickly for going home.
2) some sort of childrens jogging bottoms or fleece pyjamas or something, you could probably buy for nowt in Primark. Again, they should fit snug on adult sized knees.
3) Tubigrips. I'm sure I have a couple knocking about from old injuries.

Reading this back it sounds like something out of Viz, but cyclists are an ingenious bunch so I thought it worth asking. I've never owned any so I might be missing some vital feature that justifies the cost. And just to get it out the way, yes I know they're only cheap and yes I am a total tightarse.

Posts

  • Lycra ManLycra Man Posts: 141
    I only purchased my first pair of leg warmers from Decathlon last September, and have found them very useful. £11.99.

    The flaw with your home made options concern the ability of fleece or pyjama bottoms to dry out if they get wet, and I plan to ride in all and every weather, so rain is a consideration. The other feature on leg warmers is a gripper strip at the top to prevent them from sliding down, which of course is where Norah Batty went so wrong.

    But that's just my opinion.

    Lycra Man
    FCN7 - 1 for SPDs = FCN6
  • mitbmitb Posts: 78
    You might be right, Lycraman. Fleece drys out quite quicky but I guess it's going to hold onto the wet for the duration of the ride, and that could be nasty. I'm working on the principle that the snugness would stop riding up/down, but that might be optimistic!

    The Nora Batty thing has given me an idea though. I'm off to buy some tights..
  • ride_wheneverride_whenever Posts: 13,279
    Use silicone bathroom sealant for the grip strips, should work fine...
    Neeermad
    Carbon 456
    456 lefty
    Pompino
    White Inbred
  • mitbmitb Posts: 78
    Silicone Sealant. Now that is the kind of forward thinking economical genius I was hoping for. And if I put them on while it was still wet they'd never bunch up. Or come off.

    Big if, but if I could be bothered you could sew elastic round the top and bottom. It is getting a bit faffy now though, maybe £12 isn't such a lot.
  • thiscocksthiscocks Posts: 549
    Think sport bandages are what they used before knee warmers, but they prob cost as much...
  • TusherTusher Posts: 2,762
    Measure top and bottom of where leg warmers will be on legs.
    Buy some nice angora rich wool.
    K1 P1 rib at start, stocking stitch, rib at end.

    Never tried it, may need a little experimenting, but it should work.
  • nadirnadir Posts: 115
    about 20 years ago,during the recession of the late 80s early 90s when i was fairly skint, i was working as a nurse and used a couple of lengths of tubigrip bandage, not windproof, but fairly effective, and used to give the other nurses a fair laugh when i turned up at work, my time keeping was never great in those days and i used to have to take the handover in my cycling gear and tubigrip bandages, before rushing off to the toilets to change into uniform
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