The Fine Art of Horizontal Knitting

I haven't had a chance to post in a while.  It's not because I'm lazy, I've been recovering from surgery and I still have another operation to go.  The upside is that I've gotten a lot of knitting done.  I knitted in pre-op, I knitted in recovery  and I've pretty much been knitting constantly since.

Since I did virtually all of this knitting in my preferred position, horizontal, I thought this might be a good time to offer readers some handy hints about reclining knitting.  Whether you have a disability, an injury, or just need a good lie down, these tips may help you on your way.

Everyone's physical limitations are different, even able-bods, so you may have to modify some of my advice for your own personal needs.  All my limbs function at pretty much the same standard, I don't have a particular dodgy arm as such.  Instead I have fairly generalised pain, muscle weakness and spasms through-out my body.  Generally the closer to horizontal I am, and the less weight I have to carry, the happier I am.  So with this in mind, here are a few hints about getting started as a reclining knitter.

To begin with, the playing surface needs to be right.  Knitting while lying completely flat is more tiring than it looks.  Your hands are above you and taking all the weight of your project and at the same time your circulation has to work uphill to get the blood to your fingers.  Instead, boost yourself up on pillows so that you are halfway between sitting and lying down, but with the weight of your head and shoulders taken by the cushions.  In this position you may also be more comfortable with an extra pillow under your knees to stop your legs from being splayed out straight.

The correct reclining knitting position should allow you to knit with your forearms resting on the sides of your belly, with the needles just below eye height.  In this position you can also distribute the weight of your project over your torso, instead of just on just your hands, great for sore wrists.

When knitting in a seated position it's normal to have the completed section of your knitting hanging down below the needles, putting the entire weight of the project on your wrists and hands.  When I started lying down to knit my first instinct was to have my project below the needles, spreading down over my legs.  I quickly found that this was inconvenient because as I knitted there was no gravity to drag my garment with it, leaving it all bunched up on my tummy.  Instead I prefer to do an Isadora Duncan and throw my project over my shoulder, so that most of the project sits on my shoulders and behind me.  This weight distribution also allows me to tackle larger projects than I normally do.  Because my arms and hands aren't very strong (despite the drumming) I use to limit myself to small, light projects, but as you can see in the photo, if I'm reclining I can knit a whole jumper (sweater) in one piece without damaging myself.

Needle choice can also effect your ability to knit lying down.  I've found if the needles are too long, they get tangled in my armpits and the ball of yarn which usually sits at my side.  Too short and they get stuck in my sleeves as I knit.  While it is possible to use straight needles, I usually prefer using circulars as they don't get in the way and they distribute the weight of the knitting evenly between your hands.

With these handy tips in mind, I hope you'll get plenty of knitting done next time you're laid up in bed.

Left...Left...Left, Right, Left.

For the last few years I've been searching for a decent pair of ANZAC Day gloves.  For those of you who aren't from the Antipodes and can't be bothered following the link, ANZAC Day (standing for Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) is like our version of Veterans' Day.

ANZAC Day gloves are not a weird Australian tradition, it's just that the band I play with performs at the ANZAC Day parade in Melbourne each year.  That's me up the back:

 

Although we don't do the dawn service, it's an early start.  April mornings in Melbourne can be quite crisp and my joints don't like to get cold.  I'm a percussionist in the band and for me, ANZAC day is all about the bass drum.  I spend around three hours keeping the beat, loudly.  In order to keep on keeping the beat I have to tape up my wrists to stop the nerves from pinching.  I think you'll agree it's a good look:

The problem is that the taping is anchored on my palm.  Just ten minutes of drumming usually has the ends of the tape curling up and tangling in my bulky bass drum mallets.  So I have a number of requirements for my ANZAC Day gloves:  They need to keep me warm, they need to leave my fingers free enough to play and they need to cover my palms well enough to keep the scraggy ends of my tape covered and out of the way.

Now as a keen knitter, I already had a few pairs of fingerless to choose from:

Now the purple pair, made by me out of a beautifully soft possum merino mix my mum bought me from New Zealand, could be discounted immediately.  They clash horribly with my black, white and blue band uniform.  They are also a bit long around the fingers for drumming.  You can see from the photo that my little finger can barely peek out, no good for grip.

The second pair, knitted for me by my friend Elisabeth, made me more hopeful.  They matched my uniform so I wore them the first ANZAC Day we played at.   They were pretty good but the covered thumb reduced my grip and the mitten flaps, so useful in my cold and mountainous home town, were just too, well, flappy for drumming.  They did hold my strapping tape down well though.

This year I seem to have stumbled across the best ANZAC Day gloves ever.  They were a birthday present, again knitted for me by Elisabeth:

To begin with, they have an obvious and glorious musical motif, and in black and white they'll match pretty much any band uniform ever.  It gets better though, they are so low cut that all my fingers are completely free, but high enough to cover the strapping, leaving me wonderfully tangle-less.  This ANZAC Day, although I came away tired and sore from hours of bass drumming, my wrists were warm and protected and my fingers unemcumbered.

Here they are in action, what do you think?