Speed Explainer:How Fast things work
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Needles Of LightningOn speed-knitting.
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2008
Winter is almost upon us, which means that if you do not now have enough scarves, mittens, and other knitwear, there's not much time left. How fast is the fast knitter? How can you knit quickly?
The winner of the 2008 Knit-Out Competition, held in February in Minnesota, was a British woman named Hazel Tindall. Speed is measured in stitches: Tindall accomplished 262 in three minutes--over 87 per minute, and almost one-and-one-half per second.
The trick to knitting rapidly is to reduce the amount of movement you require to make a stitch to as little as possible. (Using straight needles is also advised.) So, for example, some speed-knitters will stick one needle under an arm--a particularly British move--so that the knitter need not hold the needle and commit the extra movement.
So-called English knitting, also known as throwing, involves using your right hand to wrap your thread around your needle. Since with very few exceptions one always builds what is being knitted from left to right, throwing tends to be more physical and therefore slower than alternatives, and is therefore not suggested if you are just going for speed.
The main alternative is continental knitting, in which the manipulation is done with the left hand. Another alternative, utilized a lot in Latin America, is to tension the yarn around your neck.
Explainer thanks Amy Singer of Knitty magazine.
