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.]

Next Pattern:

Many times when I write these posts I will say something like “you can use any yarn you want” or “this would be a great stash-busting project.” That’s just how my mind works. And my stash, too, since I probably have sweater quantity of two or three yarns at most, but tons of singles and odd balls and leftovers.

Blankets are generally a really good way to use up those bits, but in this case, I think you’re going to want to plan it out a bit better.

Looking at photos of the Color Study Blanket from Purl Soho, it looks like it’s made with two yarns held together, and that block in the center is worked with one of each color from the adjoining sides to make a mixed up color.

But that’s not actually how it’s done. This is three separate colors (four, really, with the neutrals in the corners) chosen form a yarn with an expansive palette so they play off each other. The project calls for a worsted weight superwash wool, which is a great choice for a blanket that’s both warm and washable.

This pattern was originally designed by Laura Ferguson and was updated by Hiromi Glover. It is worked in one piece in garter stitch intarsia, which is a great way to learn the intarsia technique if you don’t already know it. It comes in crib or throw sizes.

Despite the introduction to this post, I am going to go ahead and say that, yes, of course you could do this blanket with scraps or odd balls or even just choose five colors that don’t blend together so easily. But I really do love the look of the color play, and I think it would be worth your time to find colors that play well together to get a similar effect.

This pattern is available for free from Purl Soho.

[Photo: Purl Soho]

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