Techniques for Improving Your Knitting Speed
Maybe you gave yourself a deadline to finish knitting for a special occasion, or you’re rushing to complete the hard part so that you can enjoy the rest of the knitting without worry. Whatever the reasons are, speed becomes crucial.
While knitting fast is good, remember not to push yourself too hard. That said, there are methods that you can apply to speed up your knitting.
Regardless of your reasons for wanting to learn speedy knitting and your knitting style, you’ll discover the techniques for improving your speed when you read to the end.
Various Knitting Styles
There are several knitting styles to adopt to spice up your knitting task. They include:
Flicking
Almost identical to throwing or English style, flicking requires you to hold on to the needle while wrapping the yarn around your right-hand needle. Simply put, you’ve got to flick the wool using one finger around the right-hand needle.
Continental Knitting
Also known as German knitting or picking, continental knitting focuses majorly on the hand holding and tensioning the yarn.
While other knitting forms require you to hold your yarn with your right hand, it’s the opposite with continental.
The ability to speed while doing continental knitting arises from the technique’s focus on maintaining your needles’ hold. Furthermore, it results from the smaller movement of your needles and yarns.
Irish Cottage/Peruvian/Lever/ Knitting
What makes these techniques unique is your method of holding the right needle. Simply put, your focus should be on maintaining the right needle, so it appears like it’s not moving at all. The stitches’ movement comes from the yarn you’re holding in your right hand and the left needle.
Portuguese Knitting
This style is one of the fastest methods of knitting. Portuguese knitting entails holding the yarn in front of your work to knit rather than the usual style where you knit clutching the wool behind your work while purling in the front.
Irish Cottage/Peruvian/Lever/ Knitting
What makes these techniques unique is your method of holding the right needle. Simply put, your focus should be on maintaining the right needle, so it appears like it’s not moving at all. The stitches’ movement comes from the yarn you’re holding in your right hand and the left needle.
Portuguese Knitting
This style is one of the fastest methods of knitting. Portuguese knitting entails holding the yarn in front of your work to knit rather than the usual style where you knit clutching the wool behind your work while purling in the front.
Strategies for Increasing Knitting Speed
The following are some strategies for increasing your knitting speed regardless of the knitting style adopted.
Improve Your Efficiency
It’d be best to work on improving your transitions and movement. Knitting entails putting a needle tip into another needle’s loop and wrapping the yarn on the needle tip to pull it back again through the loop.
During this knitting process, there are several transitions and movements, which is where you require efficiency.
Consider looking at these various movements one by one and figuring out if there’s anything you’ll need to do to improve on them. For instance, you can change the finger you use in tensioning the yarn and how you do it. Furthermore, you can also change the needle’s angle when knitting for easier maneuverability, in addition to how you hold the wool or needle.
Eat Healthy if You’ll Knit for Extended Periods
If you’re knitting for an extended period, it’s best to settle for a light meal containing proteins and without carbs to avoid fat accumulation. You can place a chair in your outdoor space and get a good charcoal grill, perfect for grilling steak. This grill will also make a great addition to your outdoor kitchen, where you can relax with a light lunch while your fingertips work. Food high in protein will give you the necessary energy to knit faster without feeling heavy.
Knit Without Looking
While knitting without looking doesn’t necessarily increase your speed, it positively affects your knitting output.
With this technique, you can relax while knitting, allowing your fingertips to do all the work.
While it takes some time to master this skill, it’s one that every knitter needs to know. So no matter how difficult it appears, you only have to train your fingertips.
Turn Knitting Into a Daily Habit
Knitting takes practice to learn, just like all skills. The more you knit, the better you become; your pace will become higher and your stitches even.
If you knit daily, the movement settles in your muscle memory, and you’ll find it effortless to perform them. Soon, your knitting handles will work a lot faster.
Create More Time to Knit
Creating more time to knit every day will help you finish up your knitting project quickly and settle into regular practice to increase your speed.
However, most times, you might be caught up with daily chores. As such, you need to find a way to knit while doing other tasks like listening to a course, watching the kids, or even while relaxing.
Knitting Backward
With backward knitting, you won’t have to perform the purl stitches, which are more time-consuming and fiddly. Additionally, knitting backward on each row will ensure you won’t have to turn over your work, thereby saving you time.
Use Circular Needles
Circular needles are perhaps one of the biggest time savers for knitters. It’s also ideal for people that purl slowly. If you love knitting in the round, using those circular knitting needles will increase your speed.
So that’s it! Techniques for increasing your knitting speed. I hope you’ve gotten some tips on how to be a faster knitter. Starting from what you eat, how you position your finger and yarn, to turning knitting into a daily task while efficiently improving your transition and movement, your options for w