Knitting help

scubagirl81

Hey ladies! I know there are a bunch of knitters on here, so I thought this would be a good place to ask: I am trying to learn how to knit left handed (continental style, I believe) and I am having a heck of a time purling. I have watched like a million videos (except not really because there aren't a lot of them) and I just can't get the hang of it. Is there a yarn shop around here that teaches this style of knitting? I don't know anyone else who does it except for my mom, which isn't helpful because she lives in MI and is left handed so she is quite a bit more dexterous, and I don't want to spend a ton of time calling around to try and find someone.

Thanks!

MrsAmers

What part of town are you in? I don't know of any stores currently offering a class in continental style, but I know that the teachers at Natural Stitches could help. They have student's choice classes where you can ask the teacher to cover anything you want for 2 hours. Though that would probably only be worthwhile if you have additional knitting questions, since 2 hours is a lot just for continental purling.

If you can get to a coffee shop within 10-15 minutes of Highland Park, I could meet up with you on Sunday.

scubagirl81

That's so nice of you to offer! DS's 1st birthday is this weekend, so things will be too crazy for me to be able to get away for a while. But maybe another time. Or maybe I'll set up a session at natural stitches, I've never been there and I've been meaning to go check it out anyway. Thanks!

AmandaJLewis

I knit the other way, but did teach myself the continental knit stitch for when I do color work, but I had never understood the purl well enough to be good at it.  So efficiency won and I just throw when I knit and purl most everything else.

scubagirl81

That's exactly what I was doing! But I think I need to just suck it up and figure out the purling, the purling rows were taking forever trying to manage both colors with just my right hand

MrsAmers

Unless there are textured stitches in your colorwork, the best thing to do is to work all stranded colorwork in the round. That way you are always knitting and not purling.

scubagirl81

For some reason I was thinking that wouldn't work, but now I have no idea what that reason would have been. Probably something I was doing wrong  ;-)  But you're right, my goal in life is to do everything in the round, I hate the seaming part! But there are other things I'd like to be able to do continental style because I feel like it's faster that I would need to be able to purl for, like ribbing