Continental, American or Both?

[debbiecakes]

Just out of curiousity, how does everyone knit?

I am continental knitting a super bulky queen-king sized blanket.
I am American knitting two different sport scarves.

For me:
Continental Style = loose, relaxed and quick.
American Style = Tight, tense and slooooow.

The super bulky blanket looks great but when I tried the sport weighted scarves, they ended up looking sloppy so I started over with the American style. Just a quick comparison, I casted on 12 when I started with continental but when I switched to American I had to cast on 26.

I've been knitting off and on for years but I still consider myself to be a novice. Fingers-crossed, with more practice my continental will shape up so I can ditch the American style. Over all I prefer continental because of speed, ease to switch from knitting/purling, and it feels more comfortable in my hands. :)

Comments

[ginny_t]

In addition to how you wrap the yarn for tension, you might consider experimenting with needle size. You can compensate for loose tension by going down in needle size.

[debbiecakes]

This usually works for me but even with the smaller needles, the light weight yarn looked fairly sloppy.

[ginny_t]

Well yes, but what about gauge? Is it the right number of stitches and rows per inch? If not, how far off? A lot of sloppiness comes out when you wash your finished project. Even stockinette benefits from a good drowning and shaping.

[debbiecakes]

It's a bit closer but it's still about 4 stitches / 6 rows off.
To be honest, I have only blocked two items ever and I didn't really notice a difference between blocking/not blocking. Maybe I need to give that another crack.

[ginny_t]

Blocking has the most effect on knit goods with animal fibres. Acrylic doesn't really block, but you can use an iron to melt the piece into the shape you want. (Yeah, it's as scary as it sounds. I've never done it, but I've read about it.)

It sounds like if you want to stick with Continental, you're going to have to experiment with how you tension your yarn with your left hand. I wrap the yarn at least once around my pinky, over my ring finger, under the index finger, and over the pointer (which is up) to the stitch. If the yarn is fine or slippery, it either goes twice around my pinky or once around my pinky and once around my ring finger.

I took to knitting Continental pretty quickly (it helped that I'm a very tight knitter, and loosening up was just what I needed), but a friend who learned at the same time started with dishcloths. I saw one of the ones she learned on. It was sloppy and misshapen as all get-out, but she did learn. If you have some cheap yarn you don't much care about, you could try that.