English Knitting (Throwing)

Now me personally, I'm an English knitter, I throw. And so I'm gonna take this opportunity to show you a little more closely how to manipulate your hands and your needles and your yarn if you too are an English knitter. I'm Mary Beth temple, this is The knitting Circle, let's get started. All right, this is a tiny little swatch here but we're just here to take a more in-depth look at the English style of knitting. Just a little review and to talk about how the yarn works. So I'm going to insert my right-hand needle tip into the stitch, going from left to right and keeping it in the front leg of the stitch. That's the front leg, that is the back leg. Like people, knit stitches have two legs So I'm going to yarn over, so I'm bringing my yarn under the needle and between them. And I'm taking that right hand needle tip and bringing it through the stitch and pushing that off the left hand needle. So through the front leg, under in between, pull it through, push it off. Now you may notice that I'm keeping just a light amount of tension on my working yarn. And as a reminder, the working yarn is the yarn that is attached to the ball of yarn, as opposed to the cut edge, which we call a tail. I'm keeping a little bit of pressure on that working yarn when I'm pulling the stitch through because I don't want the whole ball game to, sort of, snap off the end, to pop off the end. You may also notice, and this is a habit with me. I'm sitting here trying to point out my good habits because I've been knitting for a very long while. When I work on this stitch here and again at the end, I'm making sure that the fattest part of the knitting needle is getting into the stitch and that I am forming my new stitch on the fattest part of the knitting needle. If you work too close to the tip, your work is going to be super duper tight because the shape and size of the stitch is based on the fattest part of the needle, not that little pointy part. The pointy part is to make our lives easier, it is not to designate gauge. So on the purl side I'm going to bring my right hand needle right to left through the front leg of the stitch, grab that working yarn, bring it over the top. Once again, keeping a little tension on the working yarn, bringing it through that stitch, making sure it's up on the fattest part of the needle. And then once I'm done that I'm going to let it pop off the left-hand needle. So right to left, over in between, pull it through, push it off. Right to left, over in between, see that tension on the working yarn. And that's to make sure if I was to not have tension on that see how my right needle tip doesn't want to grasp the yarn. It wants to go under the yarn. So that's why I need that little bit of tension, is to make sure that that yarn goes where I want it to. You may also notice as I'm noodling along, I'm pushing those stitches up towards the point of the needle. Now it would become more important if I had a larger swatch here, I just have a small swatch because we're going over stitch construction, but you did notice. Here, let's show it on this side. So I'm knitting along and I'm knitting along and I'm knitting along. And suddenly the stitches are too far away from the point of the needle for me to knit or purl comfortably. I'm gonna take my left hand and push them up a little bit. And it doesn't matter if they're all scrunched up. You don't want them, again you don't want them so close to the tip that they just fall off. You don't want them to fall off, but it's okay to put them in a place where it's comfortable for you to work because you want your knitting fabric construction to be comfortable. Because if it's not comfortable, you're not going to sit and knit all day like the rest of us do. You want it to be comfortable so you can get lots of knitting done. So that is a more in-depth look at the English or throwing method of knitting and purling. So there you have it. And if it turns out that English knitting or throwing is for you, you have a better look at how to do it. I'm Mary Beth Temple. This is The Knitting Circle. We'll see again here real soon.