The answer may lie in which hand you hold your working yarn.
Today, we are talking English vs. Continental knitting style
To understand which is better, we need to understand how each works.
First, let's reintroduce English style knitting, as we have used in previous posts, like this one and this one. In English knitting, we hold the yarn in our dominant hand, as I am below, holding the yarn in my right hand. While knitting, each knit stitch is at least 4 steps:
1: Insert your needle, with yarn in back. Holding onto both needles with left hand.
2: Wrap yarn around from back to front.
3: Bring needle back through, with yarn.
4: Loop off the stitch from the left needle.
The same for purl stitches, but with some small changes, like where the yarn is at the beginning, and how we insert our needle, of course, but we still do at least 4 steps.
For Continental knitting, we still do all these steps, BUT, by holding our yarn in our non-dominant hand, we can do all of these steps in a more fluid way, and we don't have to let go of the right needle, saving us the risk of dropping it and dropping stitches. Those are the Pros for Continental knitting. However, there are a couple of cons, like the learning curve. It will definitely slow you down in the short term while you learn. And, for me, I had to switch back and forth for a bit depending on the pattern I was doing, and I had to double check how I was wrapping my yarn in English, so I could do the same in Continental.
Personally, I was first shown this method last year over Christmas, and didn't really get the full hang of it until this fall, when I forced myself to knit a whole scarf in continental. To be fair, it was a simple garter stitch scarf, but when you spend a whole project working in a new way, you can get a lot of practice, especially when you've already been knitting awhile. (Check out the images at the bottom, of this finished scarf/pocket shawl, pattern coming soon!)
I've included a great video tutorial of how to knit in continental, and the differences between the 2 styles, at the bottom.
Continental Knitting: How to
To begin, we wrap our yarn, around the fingers of our non-dominant hand. I like to weave, but you'll have to find a way that is comfortable and keeps the tension you're used to. (I find my tension in continental is looser than when I was English knitting)
I will hold the yarn tightly with my pinky, as in the image to the right, and adjust as I work.
Knit Stitch
Now, to actually create our knit stitch, make sure your yarn is behind your left needle. (Right now, all you should have is your right needle in your right hand).
Insert your right needle, as a knit stitch, and wrap it around the right side of your working yarn. This should put the yarn between your needles, as in the picture at left.
Then bring your needle back through, keeping the loop over the right needle, as in right picture.
Finally, finish your stitch, by looping the worked stitch off your left needle.
Continue working across your row.
Continental Purl Stitch
Move your left index finger forward, towards the front of your work, and bring your yarn to the front. Insert your right needle into your stitch, keeping it behind your yarn.
To wrap your yarn over your right needle, I will use my left middle finger to push the yarn down between my needles, as you can see in the image at right.
Draw your needle back through, keeping the yarn over the right needle, and finish your purl stitch.
Which is faster? English or Continental?
For me, especially at the beginning, English was easier, faster, better. BUT, watching my aunt knit in continental, was amazing! She was sooooo fast. I was blown away. So now, as I'm getting better at it, its definitely getting faster than English, and I'm really trying to use it for most of my projects. I've yet to learn how to knit with more than one colour at a time in continental, but c'est la vie! It wouldn't be life if we stopped learning new things.
If you watch the video below you'll see, when working across about 10 stitches, English took about 25 seconds and continental about 20 seconds, at my current speed. But even 5 seconds over those few stitches can mean a big difference over a whole row, and even more for a whole project. For example, if I'm working on a hat, knitting a row in 5 mins instead of 6 means I can finish a hat that much more quickly. And, of course, the more I use it, the faster I become. I've been knitting my simply loved hat this way, and its surprising how much quicker I'm getting moving between the knits and purls.
Inspiration for the scarf at left is shown in the last image in the slideshow below. Check it out here. Also, the images used above are for a future post and video showing how to knit with more than 1 colour on the row. So sign up below for our email list to be notified when our next post is live! You also get a free beginner crochet hat pattern with lots of extras like how to size your hat, and add interest like granny stripes, or shell stitches to the body of your hat. Beginner knit hat patterns are listed in our shop.
As always, if you make anything from our videos or posts, and you post them on Instagram, tag us and we'll be sure to share them to our stories!
Thanks for hanging out with me today!
Much love,
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