What is Continental Knitting? Continental knitting, the standard way of knitting in European countries, involves holding your working yarn in the fingers of the left hand as opposed to the right. It’s also called “picking” as opposed to “throwing” because the right hand needle picks the yarn off the left needle to make the new stitch as opposed to your having to throw or wrap the yarn around the needle to make the new stitch. This results in a very fast and even stitch. Since you hold both needles evenly, your posture is even better and you avoid the soreness in the elbow and shoulder of the right hand that sometimes happens when you knit American-style.

How to Start Continental Knitting– To get started Continental knitting, you’ll need to remember that you’re learning to knit all over again. This means you need to have patience with yourself, even more so perhaps than when you first learned how to knit. This is because you already have an idea in your head as to how to knit which you will have to replace with new muscle movements. I suggest you go slowly, practice and be patient.

Tension the Yarn– When you are holding the yarn in your left hand, you ought to weave the yarn throughout the fingers of the left hand so that you can maintain tension on the yarn while letting it feed through your fingers. Some people also like to wrap the yarn a few times around the pinky finger of the left hand to make sure that they can maintain control over the yarn.

Hand Position– The correct hand position for Continental knitting consists in the yarn flowing from the back to the front over your left pointer finger. You want to make sure that you can move your pointer finger around and maintain tension on the yarn. You don’t want it to slip off your finger. Just practice this a few times by wiggling your finger back and forth and making sure that the yarn passes from the needles over the pad of your finger so that you have control over it. I call this “finger aerobics.”

When purling Continental style, it’s even more important that you are able to manipulate and move the yarn so practice finger aerobics bringing the yarn all the way to the front of your work and then to the back just by moving your left pointer finger towards you and away from you. In order to remain in control of the needles while you are doing this, you’ll need to hold your left hand needle with your left middle finger, your smaller fingers and your thumb as opposed to using your pointer finger to hold the needle.

Troubleshooting– Some things to watch out for when you’re learning to Continental knit are you don’t want your left pointer finger to come too close to the needle. If you do this, you’ll lose tension on the yarn and you won’t be able to move your finger as easily.

Ribbing– Working in rib is one of the great advantages of Continental knitting because it’s so much faster. Instead of moving the yarn to the front or to the back of your work for each step, you just move your finger. In order to do this, you’ll need to have good control over your yarn and be patient with yourself while you’re practicing.

Practicing– In order to practice Continental knitting, give yourself 20 minutes of knit stitch and 20 minutes of purl stitch then give yourself a break and if you want to, go back to American-style knitting.

Knitting Without Looking– One of the most fun things about knitting Continental style is being able to knit without looking. If you practice enough, you can start to close your eyes and just use your sense of touch to feel where to put the needle in, where to grab the yarn and how to take the stitch off the needle without dropping it. Just practice every few minutes by closing your eyes during the stitch and using your sense of touch.