With circular needles, I knit ~ 100 stitches per minute. With DPN and sheath, I knit ~ 160 stitches per minute. I'm sure some of you can do better than that with circulars, but it is better than the 20 spm that I was doing 4 years ago when I asked the group for help and they converted me from American style to Continental style. I am happy with my progress. : ) It lets me actually FO!
Is it only nerds that watch the clock when they knit? ( I only do that a couple of times per year.)
Under competition conditions, Shetland knitter Hazel Tindall's world record was 255 stitches in 3 minutes, knitting stockinette across a row of 60 stitches using 4mm needles and DK yarn. Record set Saturday 9 October, 2004 at Alexandra Palace, sponsored by the British Hand Knitting Confederation. (That used to be a thin worsted-weight in the USA but I've recently seen "DK" yarn that was a thick sock-weight.)
Wannietta claims 79 sts/minute; if she keeps it up for the full three minutes, that would be 237 sts/3 min.
I have no idea whether anyone has timed Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, but she can design, knit, and reknit large parts of a sweater in five days, while maintaining normal activities and family life.
website:
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checked the website in 2004; I haven't checked recently.) =Tamar
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Impressing, but I will try to knit SLOWER, to keep my shoulders and my hands(and my mind, LOL) relaxed! I am often tempted to knit too fast, but once I had to stop knitting and crocheting for several years (!) and I don't intend to risk that anymore! (By the way, Aron, I am delighted to hear that you are a nerd only a couple of times per year :-D ) Aud ;-))
Thank you AUD , i never measured my speed , i pick the work up when i can and finnish it when finnished ,,, Life doesn`t always provide time or energy to finnish things , Also i have other `works` ,,,, I never was a quick knitter , but i produce gtood work , and that is what really matters. Not having given up when illness struck again and again , that was what mattered. mirjam
For all reasonable purposes, it makes no difference how fast anyone knits.
The point of contests is partly a desire for accuracy in reporting, and partly to test a historical claim.
Almost every knitting book (even those from different countries) repeats the old claim that the gansey knitters could reach speeds of 200 stitches per minute.
Up to now, when timed with accurate stopwatches in official competitions, the fastest modern knitters don't even reach 100 stitches per minute. (This reminds me strongly of the fact that modern horses, timed by accurate stopwatches over measured miles, somehow never match the speeds reported for certain horses in the 19th century.)
It seems to me that the "200 stitches per minute" claim is usually repeated to sneer at modern knitters as weaklings or incompetent, and to raise the knitters of the past to a pedestal. Yet I doubt that the human beings 100 years ago were that much faster than, for instance, Hazel Tindall, who has knitted all her life using the same techniques they used (she uses a Shetland knitting belt).
Aaron's reported speed beats the officially recorded competition, though as far as I know he isn't purling, just knitting, which could make a significant difference. His spring steel needles may be greatly responsible for the speed reported, too. The finer antique needles available to most were at best ordinary steel, sometimes iron or brass.
There will be another international competition in the next year or two. I would like to see Aaron compete if he can get to New York City. It would be really neat for him to demonstrate the refinements of sheath-knitting that he has discovered. Failing that, there's always the Guinness Book of World Records, which also requires certain kinds of documentation.
Of course, there is the element that the standard competition materials are not at gansey gauge. Also, because of varying local standards, the speed of a national champion of France can't be easily compared to that of a national champion of Germany, for instance.
In the international competition, all will be using the same standard format and materials. I believe it is: knit for three minutes, 60 stitches wide, stockinette, using DK wool (light worsted weight in the USA), on 4mm (US size 6, UK size 8) straight needles (dpns are allowed). I'm pretty sure the cast-on can be done in advance, but I would think that the starting stitch has to be marked.
In one contest (France, I think), knitters all used the same needles, one after another, but each one used a different color of yarn, so the exact stitches could be counted and nobody had to cast on. But in the international one, knitters provide their own needles. I don't know about the yarn; I think it would be provided, to be sure everyone was working with the same qualities.
A long time ago, I worked for an engineering firm. Our motto was "Better! Faster! Cheaper!"
Doing things better or faster or cheaper means knowing the current quality, speed, and cost. So we measured, and we improved. We did not try to work harder, we tried to work smarter. We tried to make fewer mistakes, so we had less rework. We tried to cut waste, so we could reduce our customer's costs. We did. Measuring pays!
I want to be a better knitter, so I measure. Does this method or that method provide a better product? Which needles provide a more consistent tension? I want to knit faster, so I measure. Does this method or that method allow me to work faster? I do not want to race, I want to work smarter. I do not want to work harder, I want to get more done with less effort. Is that wrong?
When I first posted here, some 4 years ago, it took me more than 5 minutes to KNIT a row of 100 stitches. Now, I can knit a row of 100 stitches in as little as ~35 seconds (1.7 sps). When I made my first knitting sheath last fall, it took me half a minute to move from one working needle to the next. Small changes to the design of the knitting sheath (and some practice) have reduced the time to change needles to less than 3 seconds. (Yes, Dennis, you got the first of the faster design.) That faster needle change is not "racing." It is working smarter. It is getting more done with less effort. I try different things and I measure to see which one offers better results. Am I the only one here that says this approach is common sense?
The standard for modern competition knitting has evolved to use 4 mm needles, and DK yarn to produce stockinette fabric on 60 stitch rows. It has been reasonably pointed out that under those conditions, the current world champion can only knit/purl 255 stitches in three minutes (1.4 sps) and the record is only 355 stitches in 3 minutes (1.97 sps). But, I am not a competition knitter and I will never be fast enough to be a competition knitter. So, I do not train for those conditions, and I do not time myself under those conditions.
First, I use US # 1 needles. Smaller needles mean that the tips do not have to move as far in forming the stitch, therefore at a given number of stitches per minute, the required acceleration to move the needles at the required speed is much less. In addition, less yarn is required to form the stitches on the smaller needles so less effort is required to move the yarn. In short, knitting fast with skinny needles is much easier than knitting fast with fat needles. Skinny needles may require more precision, but they require less strength, force, and energy. Try it, you will see. Measure it! Moreover, the physics of knitting with fine (steel) needles and a knitting sheath is very different than knitting with 4 mm needles, *even if a pouch is being used*. It is the difference between a rigid lever (4 mm needles) and a spring acting as a lever (thin needles). The rigid lever requires twice as many hand motions. You would know this if you had every tried it. ((Yes, you could develop a 4 mm diameter spring, but the geometry of the tip would then cause problems. To accommodate the length of the tip taper, the length of the spring would have to be so long as to be unwieldy.))
Thus, *the rules of the knitting competitions are set to exclude the speed knitting tools and techniques of traditional hand knitters*.
Second, I time myself on a single straight knit row. The Champion's time was for very different and more difficult task. You can not compare "Quarterhourse Race" times to "Steeple Chase" times, and you can not compare my straight row times to the Champion's time. They are very different tests. My knitting one row is more similar to the rules for 19th century speed knitting, when they knit rounds so there were needle changes, but no turns or purling.
Before we dismiss the reported speeds of 200 stitches per minute for 19th century speed knitters as unlikely, let us think about this for a moment. At that time, contract knitting was a profession with tools, methods, and supplies optimized for fast hand knitting. Many thousands of people were trained in specialized methods of speed knitting, and they were highly incentivized to knit as fast as possible. Essentially everyone in the population with a talent for speed knitting was found, trained, and forced to practice for years. Those speeds of 200 spm were not for modern contests of back and forth production of stockinette on fat needles - it was knitting rounds on fine steel needles, with knitting sheaths, so the spring of the steel finished the stitch in a flash, and they were using the fastest yarn available. It was a different test. And, it was not the best of a few, it was the best of a great many.
They had large pools of highly trained and practiced speed knitters from which to select the fastest knitters. We do not even teach speed knitting any more. They had needles, sheaths, and yarns that were highly optimized for speed knitting, and they had long daily practice at squeezing every bit of speed out of those tools and yarn. The Shetland production knitters do knit fast, but *traditional Shetland yarns do not lend themselves to real speed knitting*. Thus, Shetland production knitting is not the kind speed knitting with *wassit* that was practiced by contract knitters of the Channel Islands or Cornwall or The Dales. Moreover, real speed knitting tools are not allowed in the knitting competition. Thus, modern knitting contests are not a reflection of what was possible in days past, or even a reflection of what is possible today with real speed knitting tools and materials. Who knows, in a year or two, Dick, or myself may even break that magic 600 stitches in 3 minutes mark (3.3 sps). Or, maybe Wooly will be the first one to knit a BLUE STREAK, if she can find a fast enough yarn. (HINT)
Today, we want yarns that "feel good." When was the last time anyone in this group selected a yarn primarily because it knit fast? A knitting sheath will almost double your knitting speed, but who uses a knitting sheath any more? We no longer select hand knitting needles just because the are very fast. We are not hungry, so we want needles that "feel good." 'Addies" are not the fastest needles out there, but who, here can stand up, and say confidently say, "My needles are faster!"? These days we do not knit fast because we do not really try.
Do not blow off claims of fast knitting just because you have not put thought into what it would take to knit fast. Do you have speed trial times for all your needles? What is the fastest yarn in your stash? What is the fastest yarn in your LYS? How many knitting sheath designs have you tried knitting with? Do you knit faster with the knitting sheath low on your hip like the Cornish contract knitters from the School of Industry? Or, do you knit faster with it higher on your waist like the Terrible Knitters of the Dales? Do you find diminishing returns as you move to needles finer than 2 mm? Or, is that just my fat fingers?
Does all that sound like a lot of work that would take a lot of time? I have 5 pattern swatches here on my desk. They are the same pattern from Gladys Thompson, all knit on # 1 needles, just with different yarns. The three that I knit a year ago as I started to move to smaller needles each took me a long evening to knit. The two that I did last week took about 15 minutes each including cast on and bind off. After, I had blocked them, I saw that I had made a mistake in one of the bind-offs, so I just knit it again. (These are yarn tests so I knit them from virgin yarn.) I love knitting fast. Putting in the effort to learn to knit faster has actually saved me time.
Unless you have really thought about knitting fast, then you can not judge the validity of claims about knitting fast. I think about fast knitting, not because I want to race or get in the record books. I think about fast knitting because I like working smart.
Knitting is good. Knitting fast is better. Knitting smart is wonderful.
Aaron
They were not handicapped and thereby were carring less weight than modern horses of the same classs. 60 pounds can make a difference : )
Aaron, I read through everything you wrote. Just from my perspective, as one who prefers to knit textures and lace, speed is the farthest thing from my mind. Even when I'm knitting a plain sock it's not a concern. I don't understand the "need for speed" that's so prevalent in society. Why can't knitting be an enjoyable leisurely endeavor? With my days as hectic as they are, with kids, job, regular household chores, medical issues, and now the extra work of putting the house back together after having wood floors installed, it's nice to pick up the needles at night and relax.
Your last comment about knitting smart came off to me as dissing those of us who choose to not knit as quickly or "efficiently" as possible. Hel, I know my knitting style is suboptimal and would rightly be called inefficient, but I honestly can't pick; I simply cannot hold the yarn in my left hand properly (I'm dominantly right handed and can't do much of anything with my left hand). Trust me, I've tried many times, and others have tried to show me how but all have given up when it became obvious that my left hand is incapable of independent thought
Speed knitting may be fine for some, but let me and other "inefficient" knitters plod along, okay?
Hazel Tindall (the current world champion) does not train for competition. She just knits, the same as she always does.
It would be very interesting to see what you could do with 4mm needles.
A good traditional knitter can adapt to whatever size is available, according to the product wanted.
True, it is a more difficult competition. Nevertheless:
...the 19th century knitters did knit flat and do purling on the yokes of the ganseys. The "knit round and cut steeks" method is Scandinavian, not traditional UK. Those heat-retaining knit-purl patterns require purling.
That's overstating the case. Contract knitting was a subsistence-level job, done in spare time and with whatever you could get. Supplies were optimized for the merchants' profit - yarn was weighed out and the ganseys were weighed when they were turned in. Needles/pins/wires were often badly pointed, soft non-springy steel that stayed bent, or even cheap iron. Most knitters were taught to knit, but not taught to knit fast. The "furious knitters of Dent" did train children to knit very fast but it was not successful with all children, and their training method was to set conditions of speed and let the children flounder until they either managed to discover some method on their own that produced fast work or gave up and ran away. I would bet that most of those methods were very stressful and hurt their hands. They didn't have the time to experiment and find better ways, nor did they have spring steel needles to add speed.
No, the needles bent and stayed bent. Surviving antique needles from those gansey knitters are curved like a bow when nobody is touching them.
They used whatever yarn was available that would sell. Some merchants supplied the yarn. Other gansey knitters (in the Netherlands, for instance) used the cheap local yarn, yet the same "200-stitches/minute" story is told there.
We teach it to each other, voluntarily instead of by fear of starving. Knitters discuss methods here and in other Internet locations - weblogs, discussion groups, etc - methods for efficiency, methods for reducing RSI, etc.
Traditional Shetland yarns are a bit thinner than traditional gansey yarns were; ganseys were considered thick sweaters. Shetland yarns may allow faster knitting because they don't have to have every end worked in immediately to prevent raveling.
Well, you did. You're in this group.
You do.
We want needles that don't give us RSI. I seem to recall your posting a few years ago about how wonderful dogwood needles feel, and how they let the yarn move smoothly along.
They certainly have that reputation, though.
You say that.
You don't know how much thought I have put into it.
I can judge the likelihood of mistaken estimates, especially when the identical myth is claimed by several different areas.
Some of them were carrying more weight - heavier saddles, bigger jockeys, running before the change to saddles that held the weight over the withers instead of the mid-back.
If you don't want to try the international competition, why not go for the Guinness record? All that takes is contacting them, and knitting in front of a reliable sworn witness with an accurate stopwatch. Then you could use all your preferred methods, tools, and yarn.
I have read Aaron`s arguments m as well as Tamar`s explanation , and i still don`t see Any need , importnace or even importance of the SPEED in Knitting. I am also not impressed by words as smart or anyotther term used here.
Even if i was knitting for my living, and i am not, i would not force myself to knit quicker than comes natural to me. Smart or excellence in knitting comes first of all because one can work in one`s natural flow of moovements. That is when the outcome is getting it`s best look or fit. Matching Needle size to thread thicknes and one own fluent moove of the threads , is what makes it a good knitting. Weaving was older than knitting, it needed space , a kind of rigid frame or loom, it needs effort energy. The wonder of knitting is the ability to take it with you , do it almost under any circumstances , knit 1 or many stiches, and eventually having something made. I am 63 years old , and due to circumstances had quite a hectic life. i knit since i am 5-6. I have knitted in shelters, under staircases , while confined to a sick bed, in busses, in [bank and doctors`] lines, while waiting for bad news, while going through times that my life hung on a lottery. I knitted because i could use this one moment or that 10 minutes, i knitted because i love it. Would i have cared about speed i would have missed a great source of creativity. Too many of my collleagues are reading about `this contests and ideas about Speed, and other ideas about the so called quality of it` that they stopped knitting ,Too many say i can`t compete with this , so it isn`t worth my while. There is no need to spoil the fun of thousands of people who enjoy just to spend some creative minutes a day ,,, If you chose to make This Idea , your main buisiness in life , for wahtever reason, Ok , but don`t look down and insult the many people who just enjoy knitting , and know they will finnish their handcraft project in due time . And last , but not least there are many people , who like me have some kind of illness or other trouble in theit hands that prevents them for speeding it up , Yet they are producing in their own time and fun , the Best most beautiful work, which pleases them and others . Not everything in life is a matter of speed, we are allowed to walk in our pace. mirjam
This discussion reminds me of some conversations I used to read on RCTN about a few who timed their counted cross stitching or who worked out how many stitches they could get out of a certain length of thread. To each his own! For me much of life is an "estimate" and I am happy with that. I can approximate how long a project will take me to do so that I can get gifts done and still enjoy the work.
Oh my, I can't believe what I'm reading - Speed of knitting, crocheting??? Why?? Would you time your reading of a novel? Or how fast you could paint a landscape or a still life? Or compose a piece of music? Is art really time-specific? or smarter? By what criteria?
Like many - (not most I guess) - of you I knit and/or crochet for the pleasure of working the wool/yarn into something useful, decorative, or a gift or charitable contribution. Sometimes, l try to get a project done by the date of someone's birthday, anniversary or holiday, but if I don't, people understand that these things cannot be rushed.
I feel as though I've wandered into some kind of warp speed event here today on RCTY.
Now, I'm going back to my armchair to work - untimed - on my latest Project Linus afghan. Joan
You know Aaron , it is not the first time we have tottaly different opinions about Knitting matters, and it is ok and gives some flavour to this group. But we both also live in a tottal different Globus ,,, Even though i am an excellent knitter [ it sounds not nice to speak well of oneself , but i am still in the No nonesenses mood of having walked on the edge of death and life] , i would like to do it better , i want and need things to be in a pace i can enjoy , I AM NOT IN ANY MARATHON , i am not competing with anybody..... Less effort is not always the source for faster work ... But i am not debating this with you , just sharing a LIFE long observation... mirjam
I wouldn't, but I'm sure some people would. Certain writers, for instance, need to produce X number of pages, or words, per day. It's their job and takes a great deal of discipline to do it. Composers who write for the movie industry have deadlines too. In a hobby situation it all depends on personalities. Aaron obviously has a mathematical bent and enjoys that aspect of his hobby. Another ng has a mathematical person who is very focused on how many cross stitches one can get from a skein of floss.
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