MANY girls are adept with their hands and clever with various kinds of needles, yet they take their skill for granted because it has been confined to the ordinary acts of sewing, knitting and so on. They do not realize that it takes very little effort to develop professional techniques along those lines. Take knitting, for example.

Practically everyone can knit with a fair degree of skill. And practically everyone makes the same kind of thing because they all use the same instruction books. Your cue is to develop speed in working along with a sense of style and color. When you can create your own individual and smart designs, turn them out rapidly, have them fit correctly, your knitting career can become very profitable.

There are two girls I know of who are doing extremely well with their knitting needles. One specializes in men's socks, Argyles and cable stitch, the other in beautifully designed ski and sports sweaters. They get high prices for their work simply because the things they make are unusual and more complicated than the average knitter cares to cope with. Another woman specializes in knitting delicate and lacy wraps and sacques for infants. Her work, too, is custom-made — directly ordered by the customer and paid for in advance.

Working out your own designs for knitting is not as difficult as it may seem. It is nothing more than simple arithmetic. As you know, there are so many stitches to the horizontal inch and so many rows to the vertical inch. The size of the needle and the yarn used controls the exact number of stitches. Always knit a sample swatch in advance, particularly when you are going to use a pattern stitch. Fancy knitting has a way of changing the number of stitches per inch. You will have to know this in advance in order to produce a garment that fits correctly.

It is easy to knit to size if you will do a little accurate figuring before starting the work. Dress pattern envelopes always have the standard measurements for every size printed on them. Make a note of them. Then figure the number of stitches and rows, the increases and decreases necessary, before casting on a single stitch. Write it down. Do not trust your eye or your memory. Keep those figures filed for future use.

Try your hand at designing gay and unusual mittens. There is a wide and perpetual market for them, especially in children's sizes. In order to be saleable, however, yours must be quite different from the ones ordinarily seen in the shops. Look at the mittens on page 87. They may be either knitted or crocheted of heavy wool with large needles. The palms are faced with chamois, cut to fit and buttonholed on with contrasting wool. Use polishing chamois from the hardware store.

Other ways to vary the mitten pattern is to make the palms of different colors, add a plaid pattern to the backs by means of chain stitch, embroider punctuation marks and symbols with the same rapid chain stitch in contrasting wools. Silly faces, doodles, stiff little flowers and absurd birds all add their charm and appeal to the ordinary mitten. To be quite sure that your mitten designs are really different, examine those on sale in the shops in your community.

From knitted mittens to hand-made gloves is a natural progression. Always in demand and commanding high prices, hand-made gloves offer the skilled young worker a pleasant and interesting career. As skill and knowledge increases, you also may be able to conduct classes in glove making to widen the field of earnings.