Continental and English

[aedifica]

I've always been a "drop the working yarn after every stitch" knitter rather than knitting English or Continental. (I taught myself from a book when I was young, and I couldn't make sense of the instructions for how to wrap the yarn around your fingers so I just skipped that part. Though I discovered a few years ago I had also taught myself knitting through the back loop instead of regular knitting, and that was why my decreases always slanted wrong!)

I knit very nicely if I do say so myself, but rather slowly, and I think my speed would improve if I switched to one of the more common styles. So I finished up my last WIP that needed a consistent gauge, and I'm teaching myself Continental right now.

Any comments, suggestions, advice, cries of horror, etc? How do you knit, and what do you like about that style? If you knit Continental yourself (which my instructions say is also called left-handed knitting, "picking," or German knitting) how do you keep tension on the yarn? I'm experimenting with different ways now.

Comments

[jumpuphigh]

Do you knit through the back of the loop and perl to the front? If so, that is called Eastern Uncrossed and refers to the stitches specifically not the way you hold the yarn. That's how I knit and I have found that holding the yarn in my left hand works best although the actual hold from Continental Style knitting doesn't work for me.

As far as your decreases when knitting through the back, there are ways to make them work but I've never found a book that actually shows it. I've just had to work it out myself.

[aedifica]

I don't knit through the back of the loop anymore except when a pattern calls for it (trained myself out of it after I found out the difference), but it's neat to know there's a name for my old style too!