Have you heard of arm knitting? I recently saw a graphic online saying “knitting is the new yoga” but I don’t think it was talking about arm knitting. Although after giving arm knitting a try, I think it might qualify since part of Google’s definition of yoga is “the adoption of specific bodily postures”.

I love scarves and started noticing some pins on Pinterest mentioning arm knitting. This week I decided to look into it. Years ago I tried to learn knitting, but just was not getting the hang of it. I think I was trying to teach myself and my love of crocheting was getting in the way. After watching some videos about arm knitting, I figured I could do it. I am trying to stretch myself this year in learning new things and knitting is on the list.

A young man named Andrea Brena began arm knitting and hand crocheting for a presentation at a design festival in Berlin. He makes rugs, pillows and chairs using high-end fabric strips. Here’s a short video of his work:

The Wall Street Journal recently did an article featuring the new craze of arm knitting. When you look online, you can find various videos showing you how to arm knit a scarf in as little as 30 minutes. I agree that once you learn what to do, you probably can make one that quickly. However, it took a few rewinds of the demos for me to get it– probably my mental block against knitting trying to confuse me.

It is best to use a bulky yarn for this activity. I did not have any but tried using regular yarn and it did not work. Since the guy that initiated this craze used fabric, I decided to make my own yarn strips with t-shirt knit I had on hand (which also added to my project time.)

I cut the fabric into approximately one inch wide strips from selvage edge to selvage edge so that when the strip is pulled it stretches and curls inward. This forms the “yarn”. I tied the yarn strips together leaving about an inch tail at the knot which I cut to make a fringe effect at each knot after the scarf was completed. Then I rolled the yarn into a ball to make it easier to work with.

I watched this post from Michaels to learn how to arm knit. In the video they are using bulky yarn that they double. I just used a single strand of my fabric yarn. I also made my scarf longer with more rows than they show.

Here are my cast on stitches. You can see the ends from my tied together pieces of yarn. They did not get in my way at all while I knitted. I don’t have any pictures of the stitches while on both arms because I couldn’t figure out how to take a picture with my arms tied together.

Arm knitting in progress

After I sewed the ends of the scarf together, I tied pieces of the leftover yarn randomly on the scarf to make more fringe. Here is the completed infinity scarf.

That was fun and now that I know what I am doing I think I will try another one. Got to practice my knitting, you know!