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I recently jumped on the arm knitting train. I was scrolling on Pinterest last weekend and I kept seeing these beautiful bulk yarn blankets that said they were arm knitted. So I decided I might as well try it out.
So the first thing I did was research yarn. I ended up buying this giant wool yarn from Amazon. It came in so many different colors and ball weights. I ended up buy one 2.2 lb and one 4.4 lb ball of yarn in dark grey. I choose this color because it looked good in the photos and I thought it would be able to go with anything. So I waited a couple of days for it to arrive. My husband was a little surprised when this huge box showed up on our front porch, but it was pretty light.
So I first looked up several patterns for arm knitted blanket. I was overly confident that this would be an fairly easy project that I could finish up in a hour or so. So I started the blanket after 8 on Wednesday. However, after I started I got frustrated. First, the yarn would sometimes break. Then I had issues making the stitches correctly. I gave up for the night and decided to just go to bed.
As I was lying in bed, I was still trying to figure out why I was struggling with arm knitting by searching Google. That’s when I stumbled across another blog post talking about arm knitting by Simply Maggie. This post was a lifesaver!
The post also contained a video that walked you through step by step. It talked about some of the issues I was having with the yan breaking. It taught me how to felt the yarn prior to knitting. One thing I found very helpful was to unravel the yarn in front of you before starting to knit. This even helped to prevent the yarn from breaking. During my first attempt, I noticed that the larger ball was more likely to break unless it was unraveled.
So armed with the knowledge I learned I started to knit again the next day. This time the blanket was worked up very quickly. Unfortunately, after I finished a few rows it was time to go to Trivia. So I carefully removed the stitches from my arm and laid it on the couch. Yesterday I picked up where I left off and finished the blanket in less than an hour.
The finished blanket looks very warm. And it is actually fairly large. I can’t wait to use it this winter! There were two ridges in the blanket, but this was due to my starting and stopping in the first third of the blanket. It took me a few rows to hold the working yarn correctly.
Now that I know how to felt the yarn, I would recommend this yarn for the project. I just love how many colors you can choose from. Two of my favorite colors are the blue-violet and the fern green. Both of these would make beautiful blankets. I could see myself making another blanket like this in the future.
Hope you enjoyed learning about my first arm knitting experience. This spring and summer truely has been a time to try new crafts. Be sure to check out my experience with Cricut Infusion Ink and Diamond Painting.
Happy Crafting!
<3 Jamie
