Hey all.
I’m a newbie trying to teach myself. There’s no stores around or knitting groups that I can find… and being that I’m a lefty, I’m not getting much help from my mom who used to knit years ago righty.
I know how to cast on and how to knit a row… but as I go along, I’m getting a loop of yarn between the two needles. And when I get to the end of my first row, it’s just stuck there at the end of the row and I can’t start a second. What am I doing wrong? 
Rest assurd, you are not alone. There are plenty of left-handed knitters, though I am not one of them.
“as I go along, I’m getting a loop of yarn between the two needles.”
I’m not sure what you mean by this. Are you ending a row with extra stitches? Are you lifting up the yarn/bar between stitches? Are you forgetting to drop the old stitch off of the right needle when you make a new stitch on the left needle?
“And when I get to the end of my first row, it’s just stuck there at the end of the row and I can’t start a second.”
In your case, when you end a row you should have all the stitches on your left hand needle and your working yarn at the very right end of that needle (near the point). You need to turn the needle around and place it in your right hand such that the opposite side is now facing you and the yarn is to the far left end of that needle (still near the point). Using an empty needle in your left hand you should now be able to start a new row just as you did after you casted on.
Have you searched YouTube for left-handed knitting videos?
Many lefties learn to knit right handed and if that works for you it might end up being easiest. It seems that learning to knit right handed doesn’t work for some lefties. I don’t think either way is the correct way to learn. I have come across some links for lefties. These links are copied from my blog thread post #68. If you come across others you’d like me to add please let me know, either here or in a reply on my blog thread.
How to Knit the German Slip Stitch Selvedge Edge (Left Handed)
He is actually knitting left-handed in this video.
I think with those links you can find others. They may not address your precise current problem directly but you might glean what you need from them anyhow. I’m not left handed but I almost gave up on knitting completely because I could not manage to knit English style. It’s not the same but provides me with a little insight I think. HTH
Please be sure to let us know how you progress with your knitting.
What cast on are you using? Backwards loop can create a long loop like that. Long tail, knitted or cable cast on is best. I prefer long tail.
There are several knitting methods, the main ones being continental and English. With continental you hold the working yarn in your left hand. With English you hold he working yarn in your right. Both methods knit the stitches from right to left across the row and are right handed methods.
True left handed knitters knit the stitches the opposite way from left to right across the row. I only know one left hander who truly knits left handed. The others all learned right handed. If you learn left handed you will have to do some altering in patterns as I understand it. Change the increases, etc.
I have mixed-hand dominance. This means that every time ([I]every [/I]time!) I learn a new skill, I also have to figure out which hand to do it with. For some things, I absolutely must use my left hand; for others, my right. For a very few, I can use either hand.
I’ve crocheted since college. I had tried [I]and[/I] tried [B]and[/B] tried to learn knitting several times, but it just never worked, because the cast-on everyone showed me was long-tail, and I thought it was the only one. I could never get it to work.
After I said, I’m just going to teach myself, d*mn it, I learned from books and a couple of Internet videos in about three days.
What I learned was that I cast-on right handed and I work Continental style, carrying the working yarn in my left hand. Due to all that crocheting, my left hand has “yarn smarts” and my right hand has “no clue.” My stitches move from the left needle to the right needle. Interestingly enough, I can do colorwork (two-color knitting) with one color in each hand. ???
It may help to look at a book or two from the library aimed at helping kids/teens learn to knit (J746.432 or thereabouts in the Dewey Decimal System). These books are, to my mind, much clearer than those aimed at adults–even books aimed at adult beginners. I’m not sure why adult beginners’ books assume that we know more than teen beginners do, but that was the case with the books I looked at in my local public library.
Then make something that has absolutely no repercussions; my first “objet d’tricot” was a dangly cat toy. The cats don’t care. They like it, in fact!
Hope some of this gives you good ideas. 