When you’re knitting with linen, it’s important to know that it may aggravate sensitive hands in a couple ways. First, pure linen yarn is quite tough and stiff. That means it doesn’t feel particularly pleasant against your fingertips as you’re knitting. Additionally, because linen is a plant fiber, it doesn’t stretch the way wool does when you’re working with it. Knitters with arthritis or repetitive stress injuries that affect their hands, wrists, or elbows may find that linen is not so comfortable.
The biggest difference between wool and linen is that linen has much, much less memory than wool does. Linen, like other plant-based fibers, is an inelastic fiber. That means garments knit from linen can sag and droop over time. Sleeve cuffs will stretch out and won’t return back to their original size. Even neck lines can start to gape. To accommodate for that, it’s best to use linen for loose-fitting items like wraps, flowing tops, and pool coverups, as opposed to close-fitting items that need to hold their shape over time.
The flip side of linen having very little memory is that it has beautiful drape. Where wool can sometimes be stiff and unyielding, linen flows like liquid, especially after it has been worn and washed repeatedly. A linen top will therefore flow gently over the shape of the body, rather than bulging or jutting out. If you are less comfortable having the general contours of your body visible to others, this may be something to consider.
If you find that a pure linen yarn is just too rough for your hands, try a yarn that is a blend of linen fiber with another fiber. Purl Soho has a lovely yarn called Linen Quill (which I used in my Overbrimming Wrap) that is a linen and wool yarn. If you want to use all plant fiber for your summer knitting, you might like Juniper Moon Farms’s Zoey, which is a linen-cotton yarn.
Linen, more than nearly any other fiber, softens up significantly when exposed to water. Wet blocking, the practice of soaking your knits in cool water and then shaping it to dry, will help soften up the fibers and make your stitches relax into place. You can also send your linen knit projects through the washing machine, because unlike animal fibers, it won’t felt. This will further soften the yarn, but be sure to follow the machine washing instructions on your yarn label. Hot water can still shrink linen, so just as with washing any of your other hand knits, use lukewarm water at most.