How I knit

This was going to be part of yesterday's entry, but I wanted that one to be focused on the scarf.

This entry? Totally focused on me. :D

The way I knit, the only way I can knit, is more or less English (working yarn held in right hand); there are some projects that favor Continental (working yarn in left hand) but this is not one of them. And I can't really knit without dropping one of the needles.

(Okay, "dropping" is a bad term. "letting go of" is more accurate. Except when the needles decide to leap onto the floor, but that's another story.)

I used to be able to knit fairly quickly in this manner by having both hands close to the needle tips; my left hand would be used to support the right needle while my right hand was throwing the yarn, and then would let go when my right hand was back on the needle, and it was tons faster to execute than to type.

Problem is, I can't bring my hands together any more. If one hand is at the needle tips, the other is a good seven inches or so down the other needle. I've tried having my left hand be at the needle tips, with my right hand lower, requiring either Continental knitting (which works ok for knit but not so much for purl; I don't have the wrist flexibility and/or additional fingers that I'd need) or a very awkward sort of picking up the yarn that's tensioned in my right hand and looping it over the needle, which ... is slow and awkward and, after a time, painful.

So my default is to have the right hand at needle tips so I can tension English style, and then let go of the right needle to throw the yarn. With a sufficiently grabby combination of yarn and needles -- this is why I like bamboo! -- the right needle doesn't go anywhere I don't want it to go.

The first stitch of a row is awkward because there aren't any stitches holding the needle there, so a bit of juggling has to go on to keep the needle from flying away. The last stitch of a row would have similar problems except that the left needle never leaves my hand; the stitch skitters along the left needle as I'm trying to get the right needle in, but I can hold it in place long enough to do the stitch, and that's all that matters.