How to Knit Continental

In this video tutorial today, Liat Gat of Knitting Superstar, shares some great tips to help you learn how to knit Continental style.

Continental knitting requires much less hand and arm movement to make each stitch, making it a very efficient way of knitting. This efficiency is doubled when doing ribbing, because not only does the knitter not have to wrap the yarn for each stitch, she only has to move her finger to move the yarn to the front or back for each stitch.

It’s Ergonomic
Not having to use your right arm to wrap your yarn means that you can sit up straight and you don’t start tipping to one side, as many people do when using primarily one are to do a task. Your hands and shoulders relax, you can move around easily, and even knit more inconspicuously (boring lecture, anyone?)… all because of the small and subtle movements required for Continental knitting.

Knit Without Looking
Liat’s favorite reason to knit Continental is that it opens the door to being able to knit without looking, a must for watching movies and reading books while knitting. Yep, reading books! The movements made by a Continental knitter can be practiced by touch, just like typing. With so many reasons to learn, let’s get started!

Learning to Knit Again
Please remember to be patient with yourself as you watch these videos and try out Continental knitting on your own. Remember when you first learned to knit, how awkward it was? It will be the same now, only this time you already have “knitting instructions” in your brain that you will need to override.

The fact that we are completely switching hands will help the override happen, but try to just live with the feeling of not being very good at it yet. Most people never make the switch, because they just don’t like not being good at something that they “already” know how to do!

This video tutorial was created and is brought to you by Liat Gat, the web’s premier knitting instructor, who is also the creator of the most comprehesive video knitting course around: Become a Knitting Superstar.

You can also check out the entire video course here to discover how to knit two-at-a-time mittens.