Hi! I’m new here and pretty new to knitting. I find that if I knit for any length of time over a day or 2 I start to get really sore upper arms.Does this happen to anyone else, and if so, what am I to do? any suggestions? I had to quit knitting last year for months, but found I really wanted to do some things for my niece who is preggers. Now, back to the sore arms…
Second questions, I assume all the patterns here are using US sizing for needles? It would be helpful for non-US’ers to say that it is US when typing the patterns, and we can convert to mm’s or British/Canadian. I have so many old needles from my mom, all in different size systems! boy!
When I first started knitting I would also get sore arms, and a sore neck and back. My teacher stopped me one day and told me to put down the needles and get up and walk around a bit and stretch my hands, arms, and shoulders. I was so nervous that I was going to mess up my knitting that I was holding the needles really tightly and hunching myself up. I just had to figure out a comfortable way to hold the yarn and not clench my hands around the needles, and then I started relaxing a little. I don’t know if this helps or not, but that’s what worked for me. Good luck!
I have a spot on my upper arm that I can TELL is being worked…even lost sensation there for a while…didn’t equate it to repetitive motion until I had a massage and mentioned it to the therapist…ACK…
As far as needle size, you can get a gauge/needle sizer, and that’ll help you with the needle size. It has both American and Metric on there.
Frequent breaks, move around, drink a beer (oops, did I say that out loud?).
There are lots of conversion charts out there. I rarely look at them as I just use whatever needle seems to fit the pattern. Of course that’s why my stuff looks so weird.
