Help with funny looking stitches

General Knitting
1

Hello all,

I’m a fairly competent knitter but just did a pattern that looks a bit like a one-color checker board with blocks of knits and purls. (9 stitches and 11 rows of knit alternated by purls)

Oddly, it seems that whenever I switch from a knit to a purl the last stitch is looser than the rest. I’m transferring the yarn from back to front correctly, and I’ve tried pulling my tension as tight as possible to solve the problem, but the stitch is still loose!

Oddly, I don’t have any problem when I’m going from the purl to the knit stitches.

Any (and all) advice is truly appreciated as this is driving me CRAZY!

Oh, I knit English style.

Thank you so very much for your help.

2

A lot of people have this same problem. You can try purling the first stitch through the back loop and see how that works.

I find that keeping the needles as close together as I can and holding the yarn taut for the first couple of purls seems to help, too.

3

What I do in that case is when purling that first stitch I wrap the yarn the opposite way. Then when you come across it on the other side knit through the back loop to untwist it. It works great!