How to Sit, Stand and Knit to Relieve Pain

I have been pretty well sidelined from knitting all week after I overdid it on Monday, so it was finally time for me to watch the video that Liat Gat shared about relieving shoulder, neck and back pain for knitters.

The video features Esther Gokhale, developer of the Gokhale Method, which aims to give people posture and movement that’s more natural. She’s known as the Posture Guru of Silicon Valley and has lots of great tips for positioning your shoulders (she’s doing the shoulder roll on Liat in the picture), sitting properly, taking frequent breaks from sitting (she calls for every 15 minutes, which I don’t think many knitters will do, but it would be good for us), stretching when you stand and lengthening the neck to keep us from hunching over our work.

She sells props that help make the training process easier, but just watching the video and doing what you can with what you have might at least make you more mindful of how you sit when you knit and how long you do it.

Do you ever have pain when you knit? I’d love to hear what you do to counteract it.

[Photo via Liat Gat.]

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One of the hardest things about winter for me is the lack of color. It’s like the whole world ran out of toner, and often our clothes reflect the muted landscape outside, which just makes everything more drab.

This year I’m trying to use and wear all the fun colors of yarn I have in my stash, and I think the Minas Sweater from Cecilia Lalanne & Gabriella Calderini for Manos del Uruguay would be a great way to use a lot of colorful yarn on a sweet sweater.

This cropped sweater uses 1×1 stranded colorwork where the colors change as you work the pattern, which makes it look more complex than it is. The project calls for five colors of worsted weight yarn, but you could probably even use more (or use a multicolored yarn as one or some of your options) to bring even more color to the party.

It’s a simple drop shoulder crewneck with straight sleeves, so pretty much all you have to focus on is changing your colors when you need to.

There are seven size options in the pattern, ranging from a bust circumference (on the sweater, not the wearer) from 42.75 to 69.25 inches, or 108.5 to 176 cm. It’s intended to be worn with around 8 inches or 20 cm of positive ease for a casual, oversized look.

You can go bold with the color choices like the sample shown here, or pick a couple of more neutral colors to combine with some brighter shades if that’s more your style. Either way this project should be as easy to knit as it is fun to wear. And of course those bright colors make me think a teenager in your life might love it, but of course there’s no rule that says you have to stop wearing fun colors at a certain age. Thank goodness.

The pattern is free to download from Ravelry and is available in both English and Spanish.

[Photo: Cecilia Lalanne & Gabriella Calderini]

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