How To Knit: Continental Style

Hi guys my name is Amanda and I'm from Attic 166. Today I'm here to teach you how to knit continental. This is Darn Good Yarns Worsted Weight Merino Wool Yarn and I've cast it on to US size 11 knitting needles. I did cast on 20 stitches using the long-tail cast on method. I will link the video tutorial in the show notes below. I also knitted a few rows of classic garter stitch just so I can solely focus on knitting continental today.

Now the two most common ways of knitting are the English style technique which is right handed and the Continental step technique which is left handed. For English style you insert your stitch here, take your working yarn in your right hand, wrap it around your needle and pull through like so. Now there is already a video tutorial to this style of knitting, which I will also link in the show notes below if you want to give it a try. Continental knitting goes much faster because you're always hanging on to your yarn and you don't have to pick up your right hand to grab it every for every stitch. So the first step is wrapping your yarn, take your work your working yarn here pull it back, like you would normally do for knitting. You wrap it around your left hand. I like to wrap it around my index finger here and press it against the needle itself just to give myself some tension. Now there's a lot of ways that you can hold your yarn but this is probably the most comfortable especially for me. So again wrap it around your index finger here, press against the needle to get some tension, you see that here too on the back, around my index finger and I'm pressing against the needle while I'm knitting. Next take your right needle here, insert into your stitch like so. Take your left finger with your working yarn, wrap it around the right needle, pull through and off your left needle. Insert, wrap around your right needle, pull through, and off your left. Now I like to also pinch my stitch here just to keep it on the needle and it just works up a little easier that way. So again insert into your stitch on your left needle, I like to pinch the yarn here. Wrap around with your left finger on the right needle, pull through and off your left. Insert, wrap with your left fingers working yarn, pull through and off insert left fingers working yarn, wrap around, pull through and off. Now I'm going to knit the rest of this row in real time just so you can see how much faster it will go once you get comfortable with this technique.

Now before you start your first project with this I would suggest practicing a few rows maybe even a full skein of yarn, just so you can get a better tension because when you first start this technique your tension will be a little off and uneven but the more you practice the more even it will get. I hope you guys enjoyed this video of how to knit continentally and I hope you guys knit all of your projects super fast now! Thanks for watching!!