I've only been knitting for 8 months, but when I first learned how to knit, I found myself clutching the yarn, wound a couple times over (and tightly) in my left hand (I'm a Continental knitter). After a few hours of working on a project, my hand would ache, be a little red, and I had to put my work down for a bit and relax before I could resume.
My cast-on was also too tight; the yarn would break and split when I attempted to thread my needle through the loops. All very big indications that I was doing something incorrectly.
Eventually, I learned to relax my tension a bit, and released the death grip. But I still felt as though something was off, because I was still not knitting as quickly or as smoothly as I would have liked.
And then I came across this blog post: "Tight Knitting isn't Knitting Tight"
It changed my life! And I learned I should be knitting tightly.
What? Yeah, I was a bit perplexed too.
But as I read on, I came to understand needle size has much to do with it. The author of this blog post explained that "It is the size of the needle that determines the tightness of the fabric, not whether you have a death grip on the yarn...decrease needle size for hats mittens and socks, and increase for loose fabric projects."
By paying attention to how I was holding the yarn, and what size needles I was using, the tension became more even in my work.
So now I am knitting tightly...in a good way!
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