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Hand Exercises for Knitters and Other Crafters

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hand exercises for knittersSome people are lucky enough to have hands and arms that don’t hurt after long periods of knitting.

I am not one of those people.

I have to wear wrist braces at night and I often wear less restrictive braces when I knit, because between knitting and computer work I’m really hard on my arms and they need all the help I can give them.

When I’m being careful with my body, say in the middle of knitting samples for a book or something, I try to rest between rows and stretch my arms and hands frequently.

Don’t know what sort of stretches to do? Check out this infographic from We Are Knitters. It shows seven great options for stretches you can do to make your hands and wrists feel better when you knit.

Do you have pain when you knit? I’d love to know what you do to help it!

[Photo via We Are Knitters.]

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Embellish Your Knit Dishcloth with Flowers

One great thing to knit when the weather is warm (or honestly any other time) is dishcloths and washcloths. They are fun and easy projects and a great way to play with new skills. Pretty washcloths make cleaning a tiny bit more fun, and they’re great to have on hand as a quick addition to a store-bought gift. 

The Daisy Delight Dishcloth from Yarnspirations is a fun one for using leftover bits of green in your cotton yarn stash. What looks like the bottom in the picture is actually the left side as you knit it, and each little color section is worked with its own ball of yarn, intarsia style. 

That’s a little fiddly for a washcloth, but the effect is cute, and it’s a simple way to learn the basics of intarsia knitting (as well as reading a chart) if you don’t already have those skills. 

One the knitting is done, you add the flowers with a bit of lazy daisy embroidery, which is really easy to do even if you’re not that into embroidery. You could also potentially add flowers in duplicate stitch if you’d rather. 

This may be the most work you’ve put into a dishcloth, but isn’t it adorable? It would be fun to use as a hand towel through the spring and summer, and if you already have some leftover green yarn from other projects it should be pretty easy to do. 

You could also take this same concept and make it different colors. All dark green stems with stars on top might be reminiscent of Christmas trees, or brown with daisy stitch on top in different colors could be trees in the fall. 

However you stitch it, this looks like a fun little project for knitters who are comfortable with intarsia and reading charts or who are ready to try those skills. 

You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations. 

[Photo: Yarnspirations]

Book Review – Dishcloths for Special Days [Knitting]

Book Review – Holiday Knit Dishcloths