Important knitting question!

[highlyeccentric]

So, I'm knitting away. Scarf is on the left-hand needle, and I'm sitting here carefully knitting, during the course of which, the scarf sidles off onto the right-hand needle.
I get to the end of the row. What am I supposed to do now?

1. Pick up the needle with the scarf on it, move it into my left hand, put the empty needle in my right, and start knitting again.
2. Pick up the empty left-hand needle and knit the next row backwards until the scarf is on the left hand needle again.

I had assumed that I was supposed to do 2, but it was rather too hard so I opted for 1. Poking at knittinghelp.com suggests that English and Continental knitting are distinguished by which needle the knitting starts on - this leads me to believe you're supposed to always start the row with the knitting on the left for English and right for Continental?

Comments

[sea-of-tethys.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure which way I knit (English or Continental), but version 1 definitely works. I've never knit from a right-hand needle onto a left-hand needle...

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

Oh, so I've been doing it right when I thought I was doing something Dreadfully Weird?

*decides to try purling*

[sea-of-tethys.livejournal.com]

Yes, totally :)

[metaphoroflife.livejournal.com]

Needles have lefts and rights now?

Damn, what weirdo knitting must I have learnt.

[ahsavka.livejournal.com]

Man, I wish I was there in person to help you.

Youtube will have to suffice.

When you're knitting on a pair of straight needles, when you first start a row, you always look down at your hands and see this:

-oooooo- --------

Right hand needle empty, left hand with your cast-on (or previously knit) stitches. Then you start to knit (or purl):

-oooooo- -------
Slide the empty needle up into the first stitch and knit!

Then keep doing that:

--ooooo- -o-----
---oooo- -oo-----
----ooo- -ooo----
-----oo- -oooo---
------o- -ooooo--
-------- -oooooo-

Now you turn the entire thing around.

-oooooo- --------

And start again!

When you are knitting continental, the long line of yarn you're knitting with rests in your left hand, with the needle that starts empty. For English, it rests in your right, with the needle that starts full.

Continental knitting (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9XImtoQmZ8&feature=related), English knitting (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeTmm_EwZq0).

Youtube really is a fantastic help, I wouldn't be able to knit without it.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

Ahaa. So I'm gathering. I was under the impression from somewhere that you had to mirror-image knit the second row (which I sure as hell can't do), and I was getting INSANELY frustrated with YouTube for not having demonstrations of this, which slowly lead me to the conclusion that this did not exist...

[(Anonymous)]

could you do some kind of continental-English hybrid? Like me (does Guernsey count as the continent or England, ideologically)? It could be the April of scarves. Yay!
XX april