I am Lorna Jenkin and I'm going to show you how to speed up your knitting style
if you hold the yarn in your right hand. I have been collecting clues from books
magazines and the internet relating to the process used by professional
knitters of the 19th and early 20th century and earlier.
I offer the following as my interpretation of the method they used to knit very fast.
The old knitters claimed they could reach a speed of 3 stitches per second which is very fast.
Find yourself some plain knitting in a garter stitch to play with.
Do your ordinary method of knitting but look what's happening with your
fingers and your needles.
Your right hand is wrapping the yarn around it's also pulling the stitches down.
Your left hand is putting stitches up and poking them
towards the needle.
You may not even be aware that you're doing this.
The next thing to do is look at your needle. How many movements is it making?
1 2 3 4 5 perhaps. We're going to reduce this to 2.
In, wrap, down, stop. Straighten this needle a little bit more horizontal.
Ping it off! so all your needle has to do is go in and out like a shuttle.
To help, bring it into a little bit of tension and your needle and your stitch will ping off.
Keep doing this until you've got used to it.
You can make it a nice smooth movement in out in out in out in out in out in out!
Right when you've got that bit sorted out, take your fingers right up to
the top and make small needles. Work at the tips. This prevents fatigue and
reduces the amount of work that you have to do. Having done that we now need to
reduce the amount of work that this finger does wrapping the yarn around
In; now instead of going like that, roll it around like that!
Just roll it. You don't have to move your fingers apart at all. Just roll it
Slowly roll it round, roll it round, roll it round, roll, it round.
Now that you've gpt your right hand doing minimal work,
look at this stitch, turn your eye to
look at the next stitch on this left needle. That's the one that gets struck
for a new stitch; so we're going to strike that loop every time; so your eye
is going to be looking THIS stitch from now on, to make sure it goes in the right place.
As you speed up your wool gets into a nice rhythm, your stitch gets into a nice rhythm.
You have not got much work to do because your hands are using the minimum amount of movement.
Fnally use a knitting belt.
I've got one here.
My needle sticks in there, takes the weight of the knitting. My right hand doesn't
have to do any lifting, all it has to do is manipulate the stitch.
You can use a knitting belt or a knitting stick. It doesn't matter which but once you got used to it
you really won't want to do any knitting without it.
My knitting belt goes everywhere with me in my bag, in my knitting bag.
Thank you for watching and I hope you have success in speeding up your knitting style.
Goodbye!