Stitch 'n Bitch: The Knitter's Handbook (10 page)

1
With your left hand, wrap the yarn using one of the methods described in Holding Your Own (
page 38
), then pick up the needle with the stitches on it. Keep your pointer finger, with the yarn wrapped around it, pointing in the air, and place your thumb and middle finger just behind the first stitch on the needle. Use your bottom two fingers to hold the needle up. Pick up your second knitting needle with your right hand, and hold it the way you would a set of keys, getting ready to open a door: with your thumb and forefinger resting about an inch from the tip, your forefinger resting on top, and your other three fingers supporting the needle.

2
Slide the point of the right needle through the first loop on the left needle from front to back (and from right to left). Stick the point through about 1½ inches. Your needles should be making an X, with the left needle on the top of the X (closest to you), and the right needle on the bottom (away from you).

3
Okay, here’s the tricky part in Continental knitting: With the tip of the right needle, grab that strand of yarn that’s coming from your forefinger so that it wraps counterclockwise around the right needle.

4
Pull this new loop back out the loop you came in from. (It sometimes helps to twist your hands so that your palms face you.) With Continental knitting, you’re doing all the work with your right needle rather than your fingers, and you are “picking” stitches from the strand. And guess what? You’ve just created a new loop. Wunderbar!

5
Once you’re back out, slide the right needle up again so that the new loop is about 1½ inches from the tip. Your needles should be back in an X shape.

6
Push the old loop off the left needle.

Hey, you did it! You made a knit stitch, Continental-wise. Now go get yourself a Continental breakfast and celebrate!

Just keep knitting each stitch from the left needle onto the right needle until there are no stitches left. Then, switch hands: Place the needle with stitches in your left hand, and take the empty, naked needle in your right. Make sure your yarn is hanging straight down and in front of the needle (see Caution,
page 38
), and go back the other way. Then, just like a little human typewriter (you’ve seen one of those ancient machines, right?), work each row, switch hands, and knit back again until your piece of knitting is as long as you want it to be.

C
AUTION
:
A super-easy and common mistake to make at this point is to have the yarn hanging down but to the
back
of your needle, making it look like you have two stitches at the end of your left needle instead of one
(figure 1)
. Lots of beginners then actually knit both of these stitches, adding a stitch to each end of their knitting and creating a weirdly shaped shawl-like object instead of a scarf or other straight piece of knitting. So make sure your yarn is hanging down correctly (in front of the needle) before you head back
(figure 2)
.

Whether you’re knitting with the yarn in your left hand or your right hand, “you gotta know how to hold ’em,” to borrow from Kenny Rogers. There are plenty of beginning knitters out there who pick up the yarn between thumb and forefinger every time they need to make a stitch, then drop it until they need it again. Now, I’m not going to say that you can’t knit this way, just like no one would argue that you can’t floss using only one finger. The thing is, you’ll be limiting yourself to never getting as good as you could be if you did it with the yarn wrapped around your fingers.

The goal is to find a way to wrap that yarn (around your right hand, for English method, or your left hand, for Continental) so that it feeds smoothly off your finger with just the right amount of tension—not too tight and not too loose. Once you get it right, the yarn will feed off your finger like fishing line off the end of a fishing pole. Here are a couple of holds to try:

1
Weave the yarn under your pinky, over your ring finger, under your middle finger, and over your pointer. The yarn should run just between the nail and first knuckle of your pointer, and you can fold your last two or three fingers around it.