A Knitter's Survival Guide to Knitting Through a Pandemic

These days, like no other, many of us are passing time and finding comfort in our knitting. Remember when this was the dream? “Oh, if I could only stay home and knit for days…” I’m not being smug, I’m saying we’ve trained for this. I don’t think anyone is more prepared to shelter in place than textile junkies. And it is wonderful if you’ve got more time to do these things. That’s why we invented stash, right?

But if you’re finding yourself doing more knitting (or fill in the blank with your fiber obsession) than usual, you might also notice yourself feeling some aches and pains because of it. We can’t have that! This is not the time to have to treat an injury that might prevent you from whatever is keeping you sane, is it!? So what’s a knitter to do? Well, here are a few tips that might help you to shelter in place and knit, spin, or craft comfortably to your heart’s content.

At the core of the potential problem is a higher exposure to any risk factor that already (and inherently) exists in your knitting. Just doing things more frequently increases your exposure to the positives and negatives of that activity.

Yes, there is risk in knitting! Risk here simply means that the action of knitting applies forces to our body. Add to that any unconventional (read “sub-optimal”) ways that you personally perform the task, and the risk goes up.

So, the first thing we can do to keep us safe and comfortable is manage our exposure to risk. (There’s a pretty good book that describes in great detail what kind of risk lives in our crafting. And it’s available on this website! The author is a delight.)

Managing exposure can be done in so many ways. My favorite is project pairing. Project pairing means that you have multiple projects going at the same time, but they are different in what they ask of your body. For example, I’m embarking on a lopi jacket that will be knit on 6.0 mm (size US 10) needles and I’m also working on something else (I can’t tell you about yet) that’s done on a 2.25 mm (size US 1). Working on such different size needles allows a variety of hand postures. Since much of our time knitting holds our hands and fingers in static postures, it’s important to, a) take frequent breaks to allow blood flow), and b) shift postures  so that the range of motion and joint angles you’re sustaining are not the same, thus decreasing the load (aka, “risk”) from just one particular range of motion.

What I’m talking about here is diversity. In this case, it’s diversity of posture. But there are lots of other ways to introduce diversity to your knitting. In my current projects, I’m working with lightly spun Icelandic wool – very low crimp, somewhat coarse, and very lightly spun, and the other mystery project is being knit out of handspun light fingering yarn which is a blend of Rambouillet and angora, spun with a robust twist. This is a decidedly bouncy yarn especially as compared to the lopi. The diversity of fiber properties (crimp), yarn construction (thick singles vs light fingering 3-ply, amount of twist in both the singles and the finished yarn) creates a more diverse range of work that my hands and forearms will need to perform.

Something else inherent in this pairing is the knitting challenge itself. The lopi jacket is a super easy knit (although the color design is proving to be a brain teaser!), while the mystery project is technically more difficult because of shaping, gauge, and detail. The lopi will be my TV knitting once I get the colors worked out. The other will require more focus and will be less forgiving when it comes to fixing errors because of the angora. So it will get lots of focused attention and I won’t work on it for long periods of time – limiting exposure.

But what about our friends the “monogoknitter”? You know, those who do one project at a time, from cast-on to bind-off do they part. No problem. You can still diversify. Just make subsequent projects different from the last. Again, do this with gauge, fiber type, yarn construction, or level of difficulty. If that doesn’t appeal (there are those knitters who only knit one type of project – socks, dish cloths, etc.) you can still diversify! But this time, it won’t be the components of your project environment, it will be duration of exposure, and posture.

Become mindful of how much time you knit without a rest or stretch break. It should not be longer than 20-minutes. Yes, you should stretch every 20-minutes if you’re in this for the long haul and want to preserve your most important fiber - you! You can set a timer if you like. You can use a progress marker and see how long it takes to knit a round or a few rounds, and then count your rounds. You can use a “mindfulness marker ™” (aka “movement marker ™”) which is a unique marker that, when encountered on the round, is your cue to stretch, stand, get a drink of water – whatever. It helps you to remain mindful of your environment, posture, and body. I recently got a new favorite from my pal Felix (@Knitsonik) while teaching at VKL NYC last winter. It’s a sweet little bell, and I’m so smitten with its charming tone I’ll do whatever it asks me when it comes around the bend toward my hands.

Lastly, if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times – YOU DON’T HAVE TO SIT TO KNIT! Most of knitters’ musculoskeletal issues come from horrible seated postures that can be attributed to working in chairs not designed for the task they’re doing. It’s like running a marathon in pumps. You’re going to get hurt! And the longer you expose yourself to the risk of running in the wrong shoes, the more likely it is that you’ll be injured. This isn’t rocket science people! (Again, there’s a book available on this website that will teach you all about choosing a chair!) Knitting is designed to be done on the go. So, stand up! Walk (learn how from that book you can get you know where). It opens your world to move around while knitting and don’t we all long for that these days? This recommendation is not just for the monogoknitter, but for every one of you. Start small by learning to work simple stitch patterns (e.g., garter) by marching in place; then walking down the hall, then around the house or back yard. Then increase stitch complexity. Add a row of purls. Make ribbing, then seed stitch. You get the idea.

Now, those of you who are multi-crafters, you’ve totally got this! It’s so easy to project-pair and diversify if your crafting repertoire is already diverse. Spend an hour or so preparing fiber and spinning if you’re a spinner. Then knit for a bit. Devote part of your knitting time to improving technique by doing some of the “Swatchortunities” found in that book you can get from this website! Do you like playing with dyes? Go do that! Spend some of your knitting time designing something cool. Not a designer? Try changing up colors or stitches in a beloved pattern someone else designed. These activities are all parts of the knitting process. Knitting is not just the “move the sticks” part.

Finally, we should all know that these are stressful times and that stress increases the likelihood of musculoskeletal injury. Take time to breathe mindfully, meditate, rest, and remain sure that this situation too shall pass. Every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Now, we don’t know if we’re living through a short story or Moby Dick, but either way, we can choose to remain hopeful! Stay close to the things and people you love and let them all know you love them. It feels really good! And remember, that includes loving yourself, too. You need to take care of yourself so you can keep on knitting comfortably through this current story and whatever the sequel will be. And there will be a sequel! When we turn the final page of this story, I want to see you still knitting comfortably.

Please listen to my talk on this topic with Andrea and Andrew at Fruity Knitting Podcast if you’d like more information and stretches.

“…in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.” – Maya Angelou

Knitting is filled with opportunities for diversity. Ergo, I knit.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

I live near an elementary school. Like many buildings in San Francisco the school is built into a hill. Its a sort of woodsy hill at the back of the school and there are trails going down the hill through the woods to the playground. Every weekday morning when Lily and I are out for our walk we see the smallies on their way to school.

Oh yeah! A stick! Sweet. So glad I got up today.

Along our route we see the kids usually take the trails to the schoolyard. I love watching the morning rituals that the families have. The trails present these families with what I'd consider to be milestone moments in child rearing. Sometimes I can tell that its really hard for the moms or dads to let that little one walk down the hill alone. Sometimes you can tell that lessons in independence and separation are being learned. Sometimes you can tell that the child has passed the time when its cool for mom or dad to walk down the hill with them ("Stay there! You're embarrassing me.") And sometimes you see a parent walk just out of their child's line of sight and watch them get all the way down to the school. Its a great and affirming to see these acts of love first thing in the morning. I have to admit that I sort of miss them when they're gone for the summer even though its a quieter morning when they're gone.

This week they returned and with them came the nice weather. Kids in San Francisco get a foggy, windy summer. The nice weather comes in late August and September. I was thinking that if I were a kid I'd be really bummed out if the nice weather finally returned and I have to spend the day in a classroom. I can say this because I'm bummed that I have to spend these nice days in a windowless office. Yes, windowless. Such are the tender mercies that keep me from knowing what I'm missing outside.

Its been a long time since I was a kid the ages these children are but I do remember that summer vacation was the absolute best time of year. It seems to me that today's children don't get as much summer vacation as I did and I find that a little sad. What could have been sweeter than sleeping in late on a summer morning after staying up late the night before. On a "school night" thank you very much!

We as a culture do not seem to value rest. We're driven to be productive and some how that got translated into meaning you can't have any down time. An ergonomic dilemma! Being productive is fine but it comes at a cost which seems to not enter the equation sufficiently. Our muscles, brains, and mind need to rest so that they can recharge for the next event. Failing to allow this rest compromises personal health and safety because our bodies regenerate during our rest cycle. Our muscle tissue regeneration requires a cycle of inactivity. During this cycle cellular damage is repaired. The repair process is catalyzed by inflammation within the tissue. Its important to let the tissue complete the full cycle so that its ready for new work and physical challenge. If it doesn't get the full cycle we are setting ourselves up for injury. Its a little like sending an injured athlete back into the game before she's fully healed. Odds are pretty good that she'll be injured further and perhaps more severely.

I know this stuff and yet I must admit that I'm really not good at taking time off. I work full time at my day job.When I get home from that I work on writing projects, class development, pattern design, and other things that allow me to bring classes and information to you. I'm not saying this to sound like a martyr but just to say that there's not a lot of down time in my house. Even my vacation time from the day job is spent teaching throughout the year. So its was a big deal for me to say that I was going to take some time off this summer and just relax. Not once, but twice.

Some friends of mine told me about a spinning retreat that Judith McKenzie was teaching at a beautiful and secluded area just outside of Portland, Oregon. The event was all about spinning "luxury fibers". How could you go wrong? I was totally on board, To really gild the lily I decided that I'd crash for a few days with my Bestie, Madam Huff and her family on both ends of the trip. I should tell you that I had made a vow at the start of the year that I wouldn't buy any fiber this year because my little apartment is about to burst with what I have already. But how could anyone resist these?

Baby camel, Merino, and silk. Two bumps, please.

Or how about this?

Cobalt and teal angora and merino blend. I spun a sample of self-striping yarn which you see around it.

But wait, there's more!

50/50 baby alpaca and silk. 3 bumps artfully put up to look like flowers by Mary Reynolds.

Judith dyed all of these except the angora. Her colors are always so beautiful I could weep. I've become beyond smitten with this sort of acid green-yellow lately and I'm working on a cowl that I'll show you soon of the same color. Fortunately it's happy with my go-to blues which I don't think I'll ever get tired of.

Just so you don't think it was just a shopping event here are some samples I spun.

Luxury fiber sample skeins -everything from silk, suri, and yak to camel, cashmere and quivut.

If that wasn't fun enough I got to hang with the Huffs again after the spinning retreat. We took a trip to Mt. St. Helens which was nothing short of breath taking.

You can imagine the once-upon-a-time peak fitting atop Mt. St. Helens.

This is an inspiring and beautiful place. So many colors and textures that I'd love to see in a sweater design (check out my "Inspiration" page for more photos). Mary and I saw a new butterfly that had just emerged from its chrysalis.

Newly emerged and drying its wings. Welcome, butterfly!

And what trip would be complete without an elk burger?

No thanks, but the Hufflets enjoyed one.

I love summer! And best of all, I'm taking another trip!

A perfect summer day spent with dear friends.

.

Hold Your Head Up

Don't you hate it when you get a song stuck in your head? For the last two days I've had Hold Your Head Up stuck in mine. Not the Macklemore song. No, I've got the ubiquitous 1972 Argent anthem stuck in there. I was in junior high school. This song was a staple for every cover band that ever played a high school dance through out the 70's. If you wanted to be cool you had to like this song. Whenever it started to play the cool kids instinctively bobbed their heads in rhythm with a feigned lack of self-consciousness and a false sense of bravado. Party on! I wasn't much of a rocker when this song debuted. Who am I kidding, I've never been much of a rocker. But I remember listening to the 8-track tape in the back of my cousin's RV when we were on summer vacations in upstate New York. Oh yeah, baby! Green shag carpet, contact paper that looked like wood covering the cabinets that doubled as a twin bed for three of the kids, and 8 track tape players in the front cab and  the back. When the grown ups were gone we'd listen to the rock 8 tracks, and play Pitch. Bitchin'!

I used to know someone who could plant a song in your head just by saying he was going to do it. In fact he called it "planting" and it was his super power. He had a gift for the power of suggestion. But that's now how this song got stuck in my head. I think it's there because I woke up a couple day ago with neck pain. Trust me, there's a reason we call annoying things 'pains in the neck'. Neck pain is a pain in the neck. You can tell them I said so.

"But I know I'm not alone", he said bravely as he looked out over the horizon toward the rising sun. Indeed not. Studies have shown that 5 in 1000 people over 50 have symptomatic spinal stenosis. Stenosis is a narrowing of the spinal canal (which houses your spinal cord) or the lateral foramen where the nerve roots exit as they begin their journey to your (in the case of cervical nerves) arms, and hands. The narrowing can be the result of a number of causes. These include thickening of ligaments within the spine, osteophytes (bone spurs) along the margins of the vertebrae, bulging spinal discs, and thickening of the cartilage that line the joints of the spine. Studies that looked at the incidence of spinal stenosis in asymptomatic individuals have shown up to a 35% occurrence in subjects under the age of 30 years. Yowzah! Keep in mind that these folks didn't have symptoms which suggests that many people are stenotic and just don't know it. Hopefully they never will. The symptoms that stenosis can create range from joint stiffness, to local pain with movement, to irritation of the nerve root and the myriad symptoms of discomfort that can cause. If you'd like to read a scientific article about spinal stenosis and access the extensive reference list that it resulted from, then please have a look at this:

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1913265-overview

Spinal stenosis may be caused by trauma or genetics but it's clearly linked to the aging process; bad news for accident prone Boomers like me whose genes swim in a murky pool. Regardless of its origins, or whether or not you're symptomatic the research would indicate that it behooves us to treat these tunnels and canals with loving kindness and respect. After all your very nerves depend on it.

I can tell you from the biomechanical point of view that movement changes the amount of space in these tunnels. Looking up, bending to the side, and rotating your head narrows the space that nerve roots exit and creates tension along certain ligaments in the spinal canal. It also compresses the spinal facet joints on one side while it gaps them on the other. These movements can be painful depending on where the stenosis is located and what is causing it. Bending your head forward (flexion) compresses the front of the spinal discs causing their inner nucleus to move backward and to the side. This can contribute to narrowing of the space where the nerve roots exit and can be painful. It can also produce pain to the disc itself in the presence of pathology.

So why do we knitters and spinners give a wooly sheep's behind about this? Because most of us spend far too much time looking downward when we knit or spin! I totally get it. We feel this reliance on our vision to make sure our hands are doing the right thing. We're terrified that we'll drop a stitch and the Rapture will commence. We are sure that if we look away from our hands while drafting the wheel will spontaneously change its brake tension and globs of precious fiber will be yanked from our hands and wound into a twisted snarl on the bobbin. All the sheep will die. There will be no more yarn. Children will starve all over Europe. It will be dreadful!

My mission this year has been to get my students to stop doing this.  And I've been pretty successful. Here's a group that attended a class earlier this year. They're not only walking while they knit (a feat I also taught them) but they're looking up as they do it. And they're in a beautiful Marin County forest.  (I have a tough job.)

The Marin Gals loving the forest as they walk and knit.

Don't they look like they're suffering?

Lest you think that this is a skill only the women in Marin County possess, here's another group from a class I taught at Stitches West last February with students from far and wide in attendance.

Swatchbucklers at Stitches West 2014 led by my favorite gal from Georgia.

How did these folks manage this feat of daring do? Simple, they swatched for it! And that's what I want you to do. You CAN do this. Trust me, but more importantly trust your hands. You've been training them to knit or spin for years. They know how to make stitches without you watching them all the time. Helicopter knitter!  Tiger spinner!

For knitting, start with a bit of yarn that isn't terribly dear but that is cooperative (i.e., not prone to splitting, not novelty, etc.) Get yourself a set of needles that pair well with the yarn and, while sitting, knit yourself a garter stitch swatch without looking at your hands. If this is too much and you're getting hives at just the thought of it then start smaller. Only look at every 3rd or 4th stitch. You'll soon gain confidence and comfort, I promise. Remember our knitting ancestors knit complicated garments while walking and working. You can handle garter stitch on your couch. Once you get comfy doing the knit stitch, then turn the swatch into stockinette. Use this technique when you're swatching more complex patterns that you'll use in an upcoming project so you'll be comfortable looking away once in a while.

In spinning, start with a fiber and a drafting technique you're comfortable working with. Establish your wheel settings and the diameter of singles you want to make and spin a few yards. Then look away. Keep spinning but look forward. Listen to your hands - they're pretty smart. Look down when  you need to join your fiber supply or check your bobbin, but try not to spend your whole experience in this head down posture.

Of course there are times that we need to look at our hands and work. My point is that we don't need to witness the miracle of birth of each stitch or draft we make. We look down so much these days! Tablets, smart phones, hard copy on desks and tables - why add stress where you don't need it?

There are so many benefits from looking up from our work. We can breathe more fully because we're not hunched. We can relax the strain on our necks and shoulders. We can watch the movie on TV and not just listen to it as a sound track. (Did you know there are moving pictures that go along with Harry Potter? ) You'll see if your S.O. is giving him or herself more wine than they give you. So hold your head up! And rock on.

Knitting helps me look forward. Ergo, I Knit.

Its a New Day, Its a New Blog

Patrik

I've already confessed that solving software related problems is not my forte. So even though I've wanted to change the look of the blog for some time now, I've felt overwhelmed at the thought of doing it. With all due respect to the good folks at Word Press who strive to make their product easy and intuitive to use, the idea of changing my blog page it still scares the be-jiggers out of me. Thank goodness for my friend Patrik.

Patrik is amazing! He's probably best known for his work as a jeweler who works with precious metal clay. He's a teacher of the art as well and he's just self-published his first book - Woodland Chic - Metal Clay Jewelry as Nature Intended which is gorgeous! Please check out his blog www.woodlandchic.net. Some day I'll commission him to make me some buttons or a shawl pin, but today he generously shared his talent as a graphic  designer and helped me to update the look of my blog. What do you think? I love the lighter more colorful look. I'm also happy (and many of you will be too) that the text is now black on white. Much less eye strain, don't you think?

Patrik is an amazing artist, but his office ergonomics leave something to be desired.

Patrik's desk

Check out the awkward angle of his monitor in relation to his keyboard. Check out the distance to his mouse. How can we make this a more comfortable and safe place for Patrik to work? Let's get him to sit squarely in front of your keyboard and position the monitor squarely in front of the keyboard. Patrik's keyboard and mouse are, to my mind, too small for him especially because he uses his hands for very fine work with small tools. The smallness of the input devices require his fingers to be in an awkward posture. I say, save those awkward postures for when they're unavoidable with your craft, not when they are avoidable at the computer. Now, what a rude guest I am to be critiquing Patrik's ergonomics after he so generously created my blog's new look. I'm even drinking his champagne as I write this. Be assured this is just tough love. I'll get him all set up before I leave (and before I have another glass of bubbly). In the meantime check out your computer set up and if there are things not positioned correctly, fix them. Its all for the cause of more time knitting comfortably!

Comfy Knitting!