I’m a pretty new knitter, but I’ve done 4 scarves and two baby blankets - all turned out fine. I decided to try something with yarn overs so I watched Amy’s video and discovered that all along I had been knitting into the back of my stitches. I changed my ways, but then had problems with stockinette being too tight and it was difficult to get my needles in. Today I discovered that all along I had been wrapping the yarn the wrong direction for a purl stitch (clockwise, instead of counter). Now that I’ve switched it, it seems fine.
My question is, why did it seem to work fine when I was doing everything wrong? :shrug:
Because you weren’t doing anything wrong. You were just knitting a different way. This is actually how I was taught to knit, too. It’s called Combination knitting. It’s where you knit through the back loops and purl by wrapping the yarn in the other direction. I switched because you can’t really knit like this if you are knitting stockinette in the round or knitting garter stitch flat without the stitches being twisted, and also because most patterns are not written from a combo knitting perspective. But most people agree that combination knitting produces more even stockinette because your purl stitches are now taking the same amount of yarn as your knit (whereas in the way I do it now, purl stitches take a little more). This is why for knitting ribbing flat, many people recommend the combo method of knitting to prevent loose knit stitches before the purl stitches.
I did combination knitting, too, at first! I think a lot of us did. I only found it to be a problem when I started knitting socks; I didn’t know enough about knitting in general to understand how to adjust the decreases so that they weren’t all wonky.