These 3 things will make you a faster knitter

So, you want to be a faster knitter eh?

Tired of taking forever to make a scarf?

Worried you don’t have time to knit a sweater because it’ll take you FOR-EV-ER?

Fear not fellow knitter!

Today we’re going to talk about 3 keys that will help you knit faster than Usain Bolt getting chased by a cheetah.

1. TEMPO

In music tempo is the speed interval of the beat. A song like Jolene by Dolly Parton is pretty upbeat with a Beats Per Minute (BPM) of 111. But slow that down some and you get something a lot more relaxed and poignant.

Knitters like relaxed. It’s part of why we do what we do.

But if you want to increase your speed, the first thing is to practice increasing your tempo. That means making a concerted effort to knit more stitches per minute.

This can be challenging at first, because knitting quickly takes concentration and endurance. However if you keep working on increasing your knitting tempo, eventually you’ll knit at a faster rate naturally.

2. EFFICIENCY

In the book Cheaper By The Dozen describes how their parents, Frank and Lillian, ran a family of twelve kids like a factory. As a famous efficiency expert he had them listening to language records while using the bathroom, lather with soap in one movement, and taught them to button their shirts from the bottom up (to save 2 seconds). He also created the precursor to the modern flow chart, and his wife is responsible for modern efficient kitchen layouts.

Frank Gilbert was an expert on minimizing movement to get the most done. We can apply the same methodology to knitting.

Knitting methods like Continental style reduce the distance your fingers need to move to make a stitch. So if you knit English style, switching to continental can improve your speed. And if you already knit continental, a method like Lever Knitting can produce even greater efficiency gains.

3. CONSISTENCY

Here’s the thing about getting more knitting finished…

Your speed isn’t that important.

How often you knit is what matters.

The average sweater is going to take between 30-45 hours knit (depending on your yarn weight). That means you could finish in a week if you knit 8 hours a day. But if you only knit on it 4 hours a month, it could take a year.

Slow and steady knitting on a consistent basis is going to produce more than knitting fast ever will.

Make a habit of knitting every day and you’ll find that your projects get finished before you know it.

Go Further

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