"You're doing it wrong" part 2 - Helpful advice from a knitting pro

 

Knitting isn't without its irksome quirks, and though I'm really 'green' and new to knitting, I'm still finding that well meaning folk point out that "I'm doing it wrong" - and by wrong, they're very kindly pointing out that I knit weirdly. 

I had the same criticisms levelled at my crochet and it took me a while to realise why. With knitting it took a Zoom call with a colleague from work to put me slightly right, though I am convinced that I am actually not 'doing it wrong' but 'doing it differently'. 

According to her, I have been knitting my knit stitches through the back of the work, right to left. 

Dear reader, I can heartily assure you that I have indeed not been doing that, in fact up until recently I didn't even know anything about knitting / purling through the front / back 'loop' of a stitch. Though this is eminently plain to understand in Crochet, in knitting it's slightly different though. 

The direction of your needles in Knitting partly helps to determine whether you're successfully KBL (Knitting back loop) or PBL (Purling Back Loop) and there's a trick to both. However, I think it was just the combination of a poor photograph, and me trying to do some fancy stitching in my work that may look twisted and horrible but actually followed a stitch pattern to achieve a nice textured result in a knitted Toque / Beanie (see my other knitting pattern blog post for the photo in question). 

So for your critical approval I've attached two more pics of my knit / purl sides of my work. The top pic is knit stitch as I knit it. I dutifully put the needle left to right through the FRONT of the stitch, picking up the yarn from the BACK of the work, yarn over, then pass the stitch over to my right needle. 

For Purl, I push my right needle through the FRONT of the stitch from right to left, with the yarn at the FRONT of my work. 

Am I doing it right? 

In essence, my knitted fabric shows that I'm a beginner, it's full of inconsistencies and of course there's always a few pulled threads, horrible uneven cast-ons, and the edges also leave a lot to be desired. But hey, I'm enjoying it and it's not like I'm selling my patterns on Ravelry or Etsy for ridiculous amounts of money.