How to Control Tension with Arm Knitting

Last week I taught a fiber arts class at my daughter’s school, and one of the students was really taken with arm knitting. She made five or six little scarves (which was great for me, because part of my reason for wanting to do the classes was to use up yarn), but it got me thinking, as arm knitting always does, about how to make it a little more like normal knitting.

Usually arm knitting comes out looking slightly better than a tangle, what one of my friends calls “yarn vomit.”

But the thing is, I really want to like arm knitting. The technique is fun, but I don’t love the loose look. There has to be a way to adjust the tension, right?

What I came up with was to deliberately tighten the stitches as I worked, which did help. There’s some good advice at Flax & Twine that will help tighten up arm knitting, from using more strands of yarn to making sure the stitches stay on the bottom part of your arm. Check it out, then let me know if you have any other great arm knitting advice.

[Photo via Flax & Twine.]

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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

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