Knitting purling confusion!

How-to Questions
1

Hi all

I am a new member so I hope my question is not annoying.
I am a beginner and in the process of knitting my first scarf. At the moment I’m using the English method, but I am having difficulties getting my knitting and purling right when I’m knitting one row and purling one row. For example, I will knit one row, then purl the next, only to find out that I’ve knitted both (even though I’ve gone in with the needle from right to left and had the yarn towards myself when I was purling)

I can’t understand why this is and can’t figure out how to correct it!
Not sure if this makes sense?

I’ve looked online but I can’t seem to find anything about this problem?
Again forgive my naïveté, I started knitting only last week! :aww:

2

I’m not sure how you are “wrapping” the yarn. For me, the easiest way is to think that the knit stitch has the working yarn going “behind” the needle, and the purl stitch wraps it in “front”. I’m a very slow knitter, and have honestly never learned the trick of wrapping the working yarn around my fingers to help with tension, and also have the tendency to hold the needles very obviously different for the two stitches. I guess I’d describe them as the knit stitch having the two needles making an “x”, and the purl stitch looking more like a “t”. (I exaggerate the way I hold my needles to try and get my point across, lol!)

3

That’s the thing. I always make sure I have the yarn back when I knit and forward when I purl, but somehow sometimes after I’m done with the row, I look, and I’ve knit both rows rather than knit-purled them.

Am I not turning my project properly? What am I not doing? Gaah!

4

Welcome to KH!
We love questions so never think of yours as annoying.
I’d add to what miccisue has said by recommending the videos here on knitting and purling. They provide one way of doing the sts. Once you have the basics working you can try other methods to see which you prefer.


5

Not sure how that’s happening. Too bad we don’t have a video of you knitting to see if we could figure it out.

I knit English, and can’t quite wrap my head around what could be happening.

Like salmonmac said, watch the knittinghelp videos. They are fantastic. I still use them often when my brain gets stuck.

Good luck, and when you figure out what was happening, let us know - you’ve got me intrigued. :cool:

6

Watched both videos, and yes that’s exactly what I’m doing… I’ve watched many videos, and the thing is right after I cast on the knit-purl works, but once I get a few rows done I start getting them mixed up (for example, once I just started doing knit rows. And I swear I was paying attention and switching at every row!)

I’m thinking maybe it’s the way I hold the project? I have problems figuring out which is the right side and which is the wrong side as I knit…

7

Figure out which you want to call the knit side and put a marker or safety pin on that side. It may help keep you on track.

8

I’m trying to wrap my head around what’s going wrong. You knit one row, then purl one row, but when you turn the work around to the right side, everything was knit. I assume you are working back and forward and turning the work after each row? I’m wondering if what you mean is, that you only see knit stitches on the right side of the work, so nothing but little Vs? If that is the case then you’re not doing anything wrong at all! The purl stitch is the reverse of the knit stitch, so when you knit on the right side and purl on the wrong side, the right side is going to look like all knit stitches (stockinette). If you want every other row to look like a purl row with bumps instead of Vs (garterstitch), you need to knit both the right side and the wrong side.

If this wasn’t the problem, maybe we could help you better if you upload a photo of your work?

9

Ok I think the problem was that I didn’t pay enough attention to which side I was working on and didn’t adjust the purling/knitting accordingly… I will let you know how it goes! Thank you for being so nice :slight_smile: