How to Fix Knitting Tension Issues

@kelbournewoolens

Tight knitter? Loose knitter? Courtney is here to help! Mindfulness is so important in knitting! Take a moment to breathe and we guarantee your tension will improve. Questions? Comment below! 👇 #knittingtutorial #knitting #kelbournewoolens #knittinghelp #youbetterswatch

♬ original sound - Kelbourne Woolens

Transcript:

In our last video, I was pleasantly teasing you guys about relaxing and not doing everything so tight. Go with the flow.

It occurred to me that the same is true of knitting and I have taught a lot of people how to knit. I've helped a lot of people with their knitting over,I don't know, the last 20 years. 

I want to talk a little bit about people who knit too tight specifically, but also a little bit about people who knit too loose. Those are kind of two different things that are going on. I know a lot of people who have started to knit or maybe have continued to knit and they just knit so freaking tight that they're like, “oh yeah, I can't knit that because like the needle size and I have to go up like four needles and I don't really want to knit it on like a 10 because that seems dumb, blah, blah, blah.”

The number of stitches per inch that a pattern says either because you're knitting too tight

or because you're knitting too loose. Maybe you get the stitch gauge but you can't get the row gauge and you cannot figure out what's going on.

Usually when I encounter people with those issues, oftentimes they don't actually think they have an issue they just think that's the way they are and that is not true. You can change, we can all change and that is one of the beautiful things about being human. You have the power within yourself to do that hard work. 

We're going to go over a couple of things that I've seen over the years that are really common, technical, tiny technical tweaks that you can do to try and pay attention to what you're doing and eventually fix what you're doing.

Solve your own problems. What a great way to start the day! 

Some of it is fine motor coordination. Today we don't have a lot of opportunities to do fine motor skill building. We type, we drive, we watch TV,  we scroll on our phones, like whatever. We're not writing with a pen and pencil as much as we used to. We're not drawing, we're not painting so when as an adult you come to knitting, it may actually be one of the first times in your adult life you have been called upon to use your fine motor skills. So be kind to yourself!

Your brain and your hands are going to work together to figure out how to make the movements happen on their own. You don't actually need to be involved! This is like occupational therapy, your hand and your brain are going to figure out how to get the yarn around and how to do this and how to dot dot dot.

You're not involved! Let it happen. Be kind to yourself and be patient and just remember: I'm going into the stitch, I'm wrapping the yarn around, I need to bring it through and pull it off it's all you need to do. It's okay, you're going to get there. 

So once you're there, if it's not working right and your knitting is too tight the first thing you need to do is remember to breathe and relax and try to practice your knitting in a place and a time where you can be quiet, alone, and calm. Crazy I know, but you'll get there. Technically speaking, there's a couple things I see again and again.

The basic movement of knitting: you go into the stitch this way from left to right. The stitch should sit on the needle with the right leg forward. This side is over here and this side's over here. You go in like that. You wrap the yarn around the needle this way and then you pull it through and off. We know we know how to knit now.

People who knit very tight oftentimes I say let me watch you knit. I just want to see you knit.

They have all their stitches way down here and they're going like this. They're forming their stitches here on the very tip of the needle, which is essentially like using a needle that's like three or four sizes smaller than the one they're using.

Knitting needles taper, you want to form your stitches back here. Okay, so your yarn sits there.

I push this through so that I'm on the thickest part of the needle and see, I'm just holding this here. It's not going anywhere. So don't be afraid that all your stitches are going to fall off. They're not. Look, I'm not even touching it. Don't worry so much! Then pull this through and off. You're forming the stitch down here.

Now some people I've seen who knit too loose, they form the stitch way down here and then have to pull it off like that. Look how big that stitch is. Then they pull it off and they've got a grip down here, like a death grip. Let go, let go, just be chill, go in around and through. Now if you knit continentally, the same things are true. You're pulling it,you're letting the tool do its work.

Your hands are barely moving, the tools are doing the work.

If you're forming the stitch way down here and then pulling it off, your stitches are going to be too long and too narrow. You're never going to get row gauge even if you go down to like a triple 0, you're never going to get the row gauge because your stitches are going to be long. So move them up to the top.

Okay? And just be chill. See how loose that guy is? He's screwing it up for everybody here, right? 

So that's what I have to say. Sometimes if you knit really tight or you knit really loose, you just have to take a moment to really look at what you're doing and how you're using your tools to form your stitches and how that might be affecting the shapes of your stitches making them too tight, too loose, too long, too short.