Knitting Help - Knitting without looking

When you’ve been knitting for a long time, you don’t often have to look at your hands while you’re knitting. Your hands just kind of seem to know what they’re doing. And people always say to me oh, I wish I could do that! You want to be able to watch tv while you’re doing plain knitting and purling. And if you have to watch your hands the whole time, you really can’t. You miss a lot of what’s going on on tv! [laughs] But I do encourage people to watch what they’re doing if they’re knitting a complicated lace pattern or cables or something like that, but oftentimes we have at least part of the pattern we’re knitting is just plain knitting or purling, and I want to break down how to knit without looking, and then give you some pointers on that. First, let’s take a look. Here I have just a plain stockinette swatch, which means I’m knitting on one side and purling on the other. And before you get started with knitting without looking, you have to really get good with the first finger of your left hand. This is for right-handed knitters. You want to feel that stitch as it gets close to the tip of the needle. Kind of hang on to it, and really feel where it is while you’re knitting. If you’re knitting like this, without your finger on this first stitch, you won’t know where to put the needle in. But if your finger is there, that will be a guide for you to know exactly where to put the needle in to knit. And then, once you get that down, try it. Look away, I’m looking away right now and knitting. And my first finger is telling me where that needle goes in. Whoops. I have to look now because I had a twisted stitch, or a tight stitch. [laughs] Okay, now to do this – actually, I’m going to run out of yarn if I don’t undo some of these stitches. To do this continental style, it’s about the same. Tiny bit different. This poor swatch has been used and abused so many times! It’s holding up pretty well, though. Okay. If you’re a continental knitter and you want to know how to do it, your first finger is occupied with holding yarn, so you’re going to use your middle finger to feel that stitch and know where it is. That’s the only difference. Once your middle finger gets used to feeling that stitch, and knowing where it is, and kind of reading where your knitting is, you won’t have to look, and it will be really easy. So I encourage you to try it. Look up from your knitting for ten stitches, then go back and look and see how you’re doing. If it looks good, look away from your knitting for ten stitches, go back and see how it’s looking, and move on until your confidence is built, and then you can knit for rows and rows without really taking a look. The last thing I encourage you to do, yes, it’s great to look away from your knitting, and just have your hands move, and that’s great. But you do need to inspect your knitting every now and then. I know there are a lot of mistakes that occur, and people don’t notice until several rows, until they’ve knit several rows from the mistake, which makes it more difficult to correct. So don’t knit more than a single row without really taking a look at your knitting and making sure it looks good. Good luck. [music]