How to Knit Faster: Expert Tips for Speeding up Your Knitting

Frustrated by slow knitting? Here’s encouragement and tips for ways to knit faster

“I don’t seem to knit fast enough to do all the things I want to do for charity. I mostly do baby things but I want to do for older kids and for adults too. Need more hands and fast ones too.”

I hear this a lot, and if you’re a knitter — unless you’re already dizzyingly fast — you can probably sympathize. Don’t many of us dream of having lightning-quick fingers that churn out stitches in the blink of an eye?

Imagine if we never had to worry about knitting deadlines because we could finish whatever is on our needles in a day or two. 🤯

Okay, so that’s unrealistic for the most part — especially if you enjoy knitting sweaters, blankets, and/or socks.

Even so, I have no trouble seeing the benefits of speedy knitting.

It’s the flip side of the desire to have more time to knit — if we could only knit faster, we could use the bits of time we have to knit more!

The question is, is it possible to become a faster knitter?

Yes, it really is!

Read on for encouragement and tips for knitting faster!

How to Knit Faster? Practice, Practice, Practice

Believe it or not, one simple way to become a faster knitter? Practice!

I say this with conviction because I am living proof. I’m not a blindingly fast knitter by any stretch, but I am a much faster knitter now than I was when I first started.

If, at best, you’re a relatively new knitter — that is, if you’ve been knitting for 3 years or less — don’t beat yourself up because you’re slow. The more you knit, the faster you’ll get.

Think of knitting like reading. If you’ve ever helped a young child read, you’ve heard the halting sounding-out of words, the stumbles over unfamiliar words. But a year later, if you listen to that same child read to you, you’ll notice that his voice is stronger and more confident, his stumbles fewer.

The same goes for knitting! It’s only natural that when you’re starting out, you’ll need a lot of concentration just to make a knit or purl stitch. You’ll need to avoid accidentally making new stitches or dropping stitches from your needles.

And even as you gain experience, you’ll likely meet trouble when you learn new stitches and/or techniques.

To continue our reading analogy, think of the child who moves from a picture book to a chapter book. She needs to learn new strategies so she can understand what she’s reading without the help of pictures.

This will slow her down, but it’s a temporary setback — not a reason for discouragement.

While I’m a fairly speedy knitter, I still slow way down when I’m following a colorwork chart or a pattern where every line is different. Because I need to concentrate more on my patter, my actual knitting is slower.

Did you know that just by holding your yarn and needles differently, you can knit faster? Check out this post to learn how!

Tricks and Tips to Knit Faster

While you’ll naturally gain knitting speed through practice, there are also abundant ways to knit faster, if you’re willing to take the time to practice these ideas and techniques.

How to Knit Faster: Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced Tips: This fantastic post offers all sorts of speedy tidbits. I especially love her tip about finding the right needles for you. Sometimes the right needles really do make a big difference!

How to Knit Faster: Most of this post has to do with selecting projects that will knit up more quickly. Even so, her tips are helpful if you’re considering what you can knit in a short period of time.

However, the best part of her article is the link to her video on cable knitting without a cable needle. When I watched her video my mind was literally BLOWN. I can’t wait to use her technique on my next cable round!

I hope you’ve found some encouragement — you will knit faster over time! And I hope you’ve found some great knitting-faster tips, too.