Monday, October 31, 2011

Continental Knitting

Continental knitting is very efficient for knitting in the round with DPNs or circular needles. It is also much faster when doing colourwork, because it is straightforward to hold multiple strands in the left hand and let the right hand pick the colour out. You can even control floats on the go.

Most knitters are self-taught. I taught myself after seeing someone knit continental style, and looking at pictures in books. It is not that hard. It takes persistence, that's all. You need to practise slowly, to create muscle memory.

Check out YouTube, there are lots of examples of continental knitting. There are as many ways to knit as there are knitters. I am not going to say that there are wrong ways to knit, but there are certainly ways that are better in terms of efficiency of movement. Knitting is a repetitive motion, so keeping arm and finger movement to a minimum is beneficial - it reduces the risk of injury. If you find that you are poking yourself, or getting sore somewhere, you might want to check what others are doing - try something different to see if it helps.

Anyways, here are my offerings to the continental knitting video world...

[knitting, continental style]

[purling, continental style]


1 comment:

  1. Hi Reena - I ran across your blog and it's just the best ever! I'm a new-ish knitter and am trying my first pair of socks.

    I've had problems just keeping nice tension on the yarn. Your methods make absolute sense to me and I'm anxious to try them out!

    And, I've searched for some clue as to how to know about fitting the sock to my foot. Your guidelines are wonderful!

    For a craft with only two stitches, it's amazing how many questions I've had. Thank you for your blog posts. I'm going to try some of your sock techniques when I get through what I've started.

    -Gaye, Maple WI

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