Okay… I just taught myself how to knit about 2 weeks ago… I was so sick of the knit stitch I couldn’t take it anymore, so I put down the scarf and decided to make a little sqaure and practice some different stitches.
I knitted about four rows then tried purling. I got it to work for one row, and have knitted about 10 rows since then. I swear I didn’t change my method, but the rows are coming out as knit stitches and not purl stitches. I know this is probably a typical beginner mistake, but between two websites and the how-to knitty gritty show, I just cant figure out what I am doing wrong.
Yarn is in front, need through front, wrapping counter-clockwise. (i knit continental method)
Knit and purl are the reverse of each other – so if you’re purling every row, it will look the same as if you knit every row. The “knit” side is the flat side and the “purl” side is the bump side, if that makes any sense. If you alternate knit and purl rows, you’ll get stockinette stitch, with the Vs on one side and the bumps on the other.
The knit stitch has two sides. I’m going to call them the “v” side and the “bump” side. The bump side sticks out more, so when you do row after row of knitting, all you see are bumps. If you stretch the fabric a bit, you can see the Vs hiding behind the bumps.
Purling is like knitting from the other side. When you do a knit stitch, pause in the middle and look at your work from the other side - it looks as though you’re purling. (At least, it does when I do it.) Since it’s the same stitch, you get the same result - the bumps on the outside and the Vs hiding behind them.
If you want to see a visible difference in your finished piece, you’ll want to try stockinette or stocking stitch - knit one row, purl one row. That makes all the bumps go to one side of your work and all the Vs go to the other side. Be careful with it, though - it likes to curl around the edges. To prevent that, you can knit 5 stitches on each end of every row. That makes a garter stitch border, which should keep the rest of the piece pretty flat.
