Knitting Tension Rig

Series Summary

Within the past few years, knitting has become quite popular again. A new generation of knitters use fun and creative yarns to make clothes, scarves and accessories. Knitting can be used as an alternative to traditional clothing manufacturers and is the perfect outlet for your personal style. All you need is a set of needles and some yarn to enter this exciting new world of do it yourself fashion.

In this free video series, our expert will show you how to do Continental knitting. You will learn the basics of how to pick out knitting needles and yarn, how to make a tension rig and how to cast on the first stitches. You will also learn how to knit a variety of different stitches, including the SSK stitch, short rowing stitches, cable stitches and rib stitches. Get tips on how to knit backwards and how to circular knit with double pointed needles. If you are interested in knitting, let our expert show you everything you need to know to get started in this fun and easy craft.

Video Transcript

"Hi I?m Jeanette White on behalf of Expert Village and we're going to be doing continental knitting. The first thing we need to do is a tension rig and you?re going to open up your left hand. That's the main difference between European knitting and continental knitting is that the yarn is held in your left hand as opposed to your right hand. This is also sometimes called picking. I?m going to hook the yarn around my baby finger and pass it through my hand the minute it passes past my ring finger I?m going to bring my ring finger down with my baby finger. These two fingers will always be in this pose the only difference is are they slightly relaxed and letting the yarn flow or are they clamped down and you stop the flow of the yarn. Now we're going to bring this up over the top of my index finger and now I?m ready to begin. This is important because in keeping a tension that's how we keep our knitting even. This is going to be a lot of fun on the next step."