Monday, March 31, 2008

How to Tuesday : Continental Knitting

I've been working on the Ribbed Baby Jacket from Debbie Bliss' Special Knits. It's an easy all in one piece - the only ugh part is picking up 150+ stitches and doing 4inches of double ribbing. I hate ribbing at the best of times, its slow and it always feels like I am spending more time switching the yarn that *actually* knitting.

So I decided I would learn how to continental!

It's really not as hard as I thought. I looked through tons of youtube videos and the one that I found the best was this one from KnittingHelp.com. This is the clip for purl stitch (she has another one for knit stitch as well) but in it she also demonstrates knit stitch/ribbing.

I don't think it was quicker since I was learning and I had a lot of trouble finding a way to hold the yarn that I liked. It did get easier and easier though and I think I will do this more often, especially for ribbing. My tension is a bit wacky in places but blocking has helped with that and I guess that is to be expected when one is learning. Overall though, I think I actually like continental knitting!!

Give it a go!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Yeah I quite like continental too, forced myself to learn it sometime a while ago when I was working on a stranded project and am using it now for the winter vest I'm knitting for DD. It does take some perserverance but it sooo worth it with 2-colours on the go, much quicker. Cant say I use it all the time though, prefer my 'own' way mostly.....LOL