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

[aedifica]

Ooh. For me that would be really uncomfortable (I tried out the action and my hand doesn't like bending that way) but it's interesting to read how you do it!