Saturday, March 12, 2011

Guest Post - Knitting Styles


Since Mz. JFibers is having some internet "issues" I have been trusted to do a couple of guest posts on her blog!  Since most of the people who read this blog are friends of both of us, I feel a bit odd introducing myself, but here we go:  I'm Kala and my blog is called Vegancraftastic.  My blog is a chronicle of my crafty adventures from a vegan perspective and also features all kinds of goodies and foods that I love. Ok, I think that's enough of that, let's get to the post!

While chatting about knitting today with a group of my friends (including JFibers) the subject of knitting styles came up and whether gender or other factors influences which style someone will be drawn to.  While there are many many styles of knitting, the two big ones are Continental (picking) and English (throwing).  I personally throw, but in a bit of an odd way, or so I'm told!  JFibers does a variation of picking with some special Norwegian techniques thrown in and she knits WAY faster than I do - that girl is a machine!  The speed seems like the big draw to trying out picking, that and the smaller range of motion.  I learned to knit from reading the book Stitch and Bitch, at the time I lived in rural Minnesota and didn't know anybody that knit, so that's why I might hold my yarn a wee bit different that someone who learned from a friend or from taking a class, I had nobody to correct me.  But that's the wonderful thing about knitting, as long as you're getting a product you're happy with there is no "wrong" way to knit.

So what style of knitting do you love?

-kala

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm a thrower, but I suspect I would be a picker if I were right-handed. I used to crochet and, as a lefty, would hold the yarn in my right hand, so when I learned to knit throwing just felt more natural. I feel like one of these days I'm-a have to learn to hold the yarn in my left hand because I want to move on to colorwork and am also curious to see if I get the increase in speed that supposedly comes along with picking.

Anonymous said...

Also...hi, this is Randi over at bigmonkeypie. (Didn't realize it would just take my g-mail ID.)