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.]

One of the fun things about knitters is that we will use a holiday theme on any kind of project. From Easter bunny socks to Christmas sweaters, there’s no combination of holiday motif and knitwear genre we won’t combine.

Case in point: Halloween cowls.

This fun cowl from Sweet Vireo Designs features large carved pumpkins and little cats and skulls. It uses two colors of DK weight yarn and I love the multicolored yarn for the background color on this one. And the braids! So cute.

Spooky Season by Jocelyn Tunney (also on Ravelry) uses fingering weight yarn in two colors to make a design with crescent moons and eyes. There are two circumferences and two heights available so you can make it a neck hugger or a slightly bigger project if you like.

Make more moons with the Broom Riding Cowl from Vanessa Ewing Knits. This two color pattern looks extra fun with a multicolored yarn for the colorwork, but you can use a solid as well. It calls for DK weight yarn but there is also a fingering weight version if you have some yarn in your stash you want to use.

Jinx Made has another fun Halloween cowl, this time covered in skulls. South Philly Skulls uses DK weight yarn and comes in two lengths, and there’s also a matching hat pattern, both of which can be found on Ravelry.

The Ghost Stories cowl from Melissa Knit Wear is a two-color cowl with ghosts of different sizes on the body. It uses DK weight yarn, and average sized skeins will allow you to get two cowls out of two skeins. It also calls for stitch markers to help you keep your place in the chart.

Or stitch up a cowl with a giant bat on it. The Nightling Cowl from Jen Immer uses DK weight yarn in two colors and has moons and a large bat on it. This pattern can be found on Ravelry.

How about spooky trees? The Weirwood Cowl from Andrea Krüß-Anders is inspired by the weirwood trees in the Game of Thrones books, and is worked in two colors of fingering weight yarn. You can find this free pattern on Ravelry.

If a bandana cowl is more your thing, try Cowloween from Tellybean Knits (on Ravelry). This colorful design is worked from the top down and features pumpkins, ghosts and candy colored stripes, and is worked in a light fingering weight yarn. There are kid and adult sizes available.

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