Hi all! Just stumbled across this site today after deciding to start knitting. I have my equipment and settled down to watch the beginner videos, only to struggle with the simplest act of casting on. I can do it fine with my left hand, but as soon as I try with my right I find the needle slipping and yarn just goes everywhere.
Are there other lefties out there? How should I overcome these problems? Can I simply sort of work in reverse on my left hand, inverting instructions (which I’ll be honest, I ended up doing for quite a while and was far more comfortable for me)??
Basically, I’m happy to forge ahead working left-handed, but I’m worried that this will more or less ruin any pattern I attempt.
Hi. Welcome to KH and to knitting. There are left handed people who knit here but I’m not sure any of them knit left handed. I just ran a Google search and here’s what popped up. https://www.google.com/#q=knitting+for+lefties
First thought-- do you mean truly left handed where you move stitches from the right needle to left? Or are you referring to how you hold the yarn? Holding the working yarn in your left hand is continental method and in your right hand is English method. As long as your stitches are still worked left needle to right needle it’s right handed.
That said…there’s no knitting police so you can knit however works for you. In my experience though most left handers learn to knit right handed. It is really a two handed activity so both hands get used. Even right handers struggle in the beginning and feel like they have no control. Just takes practice.
The vast majority of patterns are written for right handed knitting which does present a problem if you knit truly left handed. You’ll have to “translate” all your patterns to the left handed method. It’s not as simple as just reversing it. Increases and decreases would also have to be changed in some patterns. IMO I’d practice and learn right handed.
I do mean moving the stitches from right to left. I’d initially started doing that before realising that I was essentially doing it wrong.
It does sound hard - I had the same problem with learning guitar and ended up just learning right handed. I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it! Thanks for helping, I was confusing myself a bit there!
Thanks, GG! I ran a search earlier on ‘left handed knitting’ and most sites told me I meant continental, and I ended up feeling very confused and wondering if that was indeed what I meant.
I’ll have a look, but it sounds like I’ll have to translate patterns to work backwards, and I have neither the skill nor the patience for that
You’re probably right in that most lefties don’t learn to knit left-handed, so I’ll struggle on and learn right-handed
I’m one of the lefties here, and I taught myself to knit last summer. I taught myself right handed, and I do EVERYTHING else left handed. If I were you, I’d keep trying to learn right handed. It will be much easier in the long run. I really struggled in the beginning, and I don’t regret learning right handed one bit. HTH
Just a thought. I am definitely right handed. At one point someone with a problem that kept them from knitting the way they normally did was wanting to learn to do it lefty style. I tried it and I could do it. I am so sure I couldn’t have learned to use my left hand in the first place. Maybe after you learn to knit at all you can then do it with your right hand. You might switch back and forth even, some patterns would probably work just fine either way. Some lefties apparently can’t learn to do it the right handed way. I’m sure some right handers wouldn’t be able to do it the lefty way. Find what works for you. It seems there is more and more help out there for those who do use their left hand to hold the working needle. A post from my blog thread. I didn’t remember it earlier.
You’re welcome. Just a thought. I am definitely right handed. At one point someone with a problem that kept them from knitting the way they normally did was wanting to learn to do it lefty style. I tried it and I could do it. I am so sure I couldn’t have learned to use my left hand in the first place. Maybe after you learn to knit at all you can then do it with your right hand. You might switch back and forth even, some patterns would probably work just fine either way. Some lefties apparently can’t learn to do it the right handed way. I’m sure some right handers wouldn’t be able to do it the lefty way. Find what works for you. It seems there is more and more help out there for those who do use their left hand to hold the working needle. A post from my blog thread. I didn’t remember it earlier.
Thank you Janis!!! I’m usually a bit ambidextrous, in that I use my right hand for some things (it has more strength but less control). As such, I just have trouble controlling things when leading with the right hand. I’ve nearly poked myself in the eye once or twice with the unexpected force I used! But you’re right, it will probably be easier in the long run and hopefully this will help me control my errant right hand a little more!
Okay, that makes sense. Most of my trouble comes from my right hand being far to unpredictable, which makes moving stitches from left to right a pain, but when I hold the right needle still and instead work the left needle I have more control.
So, learning left-handed and then trying the right-handed method sounds like a good idea. at least then I’ll know what I’m doing, and won’t have to worry about that as well as how to do it!
Maybe you’d like to take a look at the lever method, also referred to as Irish Cottage Knitting and several other terms. In lever knitting, the right needle is fixed, the left is manipulated, and the right hand feeds the yarn. We’ve had two discussions here at KnittingHelp.com that I’m aware of:
If lever knitting does work for you, you’ll be saved the necessity of “translating” each and every knitting pattern you follow and/or having to develop your own for everything you want to create. The usual patterns and instructions work 100% normally with lever knitting–just a whole lot faster, once the knitter figures it out!
I hope this info is helpful to you.
I’m in the middle of switching from Continental to Lever right now, in fact. Why? ==> I just learned to knit in May 2011, hardly knit at all in 2013, knit like a hypercaffeinated gerbil in Jan/Feb/Mar 2014, but have almost entirely crocheted since then, preparing for the switchover. I really wish I’d learned lever from the start, but of course I didn’t know it existed… The speed I can potentially attain, vs. my current 20 st/min (and that’s after a “Speed and Efficiency” class with Stephanie P-McPhee), is just too great for me to let lever knitting hang in front of me like a large carrot without making a Huge Effort to go for it.
Best wishes, whichever style you go with!
–from a mixed-handed person (for each skill I learn, I also have to figure out which hand “wants” to do it)
Wow thanks DogCatMom, after taking a squiz at the lever method it actually looks really helpful - not to mention economical! Saves space and energy, and leads with the left hand (thank goodness). After trying again today, I managed to knit a row of 25 right handed, but when purling…bad things happened. Left hand? Worked like a charm. So I’ll definitely give the Lever method a try, and by the looks of things I’ll stick to it.
Thanks again so much for understanding and pointing me in this direction!
As far as I know lever knitting only works with long straight needles. So knowing how to knit right handed with the star dared method will be helpful for knitting in the round with DPN (double pointed needles) or using circular needles.
Not so. Stephanie P-McPhee was working on a sock using DPNs and the lever method in our class. She did recommend, though, that we become “comfortable” with straights + lever method before transferring the skill to DPNs. She also said that it can be used with circulars, but didn’t provide any specific guidance on how to do it.
My theory is that, once the hands “know” what to do with straights, they’ll “know” what to do with DPNs and circulars as well. Also, as I read/view Jackie E-S’s instrux and photos, there are some hints re. circs.
Thx, GG. Stephanie P-McPhee had four DPNs going in her two hands, was standing up facing us quite normally, and was supporting one DPN at a time in her right hand. Maybe like Jackie E-S? I was sitting to Stephanie’s left side, so her left arm blocked my view of her right hand. Rats…
But her DPNs looked as if they were a minimum of 6" long; that could be part of making the lever system work on DPNs (i.e., having space to hold/support the needle as well as room for the actual knitting).
I’ll get back to everyone on this…later. Right now I’m just at the 14-inch straight needle stage in my switchover.
The possibility of being able to chunk out two, three, or even more times as many stitches per minute as I do now (a big fat 20 st/min) is just too much for me to leave lying in the wayside. I [B]have[/B] to give it a good shot, even though silly me signed up for TKGA’s Master Hand Knitter Level 1 just over a month ago… :lol: Heaven only knows what this will do to my gauge/knit stitch/purl stitch/everything else!
We weren’t permitted to photograph, much less film, the class. But as I participate in this discussion, small aspects of what SPM did come back to me; Jackie E-S’s website has helped with this, too.
I offer this note because, as I read back through my posts in this thread, someone could potentially detect inconsistency in what I’ve said (e.g., about DPNs). Although SPM didn’t [I]discuss[/I] DPN technique or provide any guidance, she was in fact [I]working[/I] with DPNs during part of her “intro” to the class, and I watched as closely as I could. Her actual demonstrations of technique were on 14"-long straights (maybe 35 cm?).
Wow - thank you all for the tips and discussion! I’ve been trying the lever method and it’s a little awkward but more manageable than right handed. I’m probably helped a little by learning this from the get-go, whereas unlearning a technique and learning a new one like this would be difficult!
While knitting right handed I have found that I prefer english style, for some reason it’s just easier and my hands seem to want to do that over continental (makes zero sense, I know). Right handed is much slower going, and I find that half of my stitches are unreasonably tight while the other half are so loose i’m not even sure they’re stitches, but I think it is a valuable skill to learn so I’m spending time with both lever and english until i can do both reasonably well (as mentioned above, lever method doesn’t seem too practical with some projects, and while I [I]am[/I] just starting out, i will eventually move on to these things and it’s better to learn now, while i’m still learning, than face frustration later on. (if that makes sense, I suppose).
Thanks again for such amazing help and discussion! I have so many resources bookmarked now that I’m running out of room on my bookmark bar!
I’d also like to point out that knitting is difficult and awkward for everyone in the beginning regardless of their handed-ness. Everyone’s tension/gauge is wonky in the beginning, too. That just takes practice. It’s not all because you’re left handed.
I was a crocheter long before I knit and carried my yarn in my left hand. I tried continental at first because of that, but I found English easier, too. That’s why I always say “there is no right way to knit, do what works for you!”
