A blast from the (very distant) past

Although I'm left-handed, and cut out, pin, sew, unpick, and iron that way, I knit right-handed. From a discussion with other knitters a few weeks ago, I've discovered that this isn't uncommon. Partly it's a practical thing: patterns are written to be knitted right-handed, and doing otherwise means endless fiddling with details such as shaping instructions and cable twist directions. But for most right-knitting lefties, me included, it's simply the case that we were taught by a right-hander.

Experiment in progress

Although I only started knitting seriously in 2023, I learned the basics over 50 years ago, at primary school. The conversation about handedness reminded me of something I had long forgotten, that I confused my teacher by producing perfect stocking stitch when we had only been taught garter stitch. The reason being that I hadn't twigged that I should swap my needles over at the end of the row; I simply knitted from left needle to right needle, and then back again.

I was told that this was wrong, and duly stopped doing it. But thinking about it now - no need to do purl rows, yay - I rather wished that I hadn't. So of course, I wondered if I could pick it up again.

My first attempt was to knit one row normally, and then back following the instructions for left-handed knitting in what is, indeed, my knitting bible.

My first port of call for any knitting questions

Including knitting left-handed

This approach didn't work. Of course, the assumption is that having completed the row, the knitter will swap the needles over and do a left-handed purl row. So for me, the stitches were the wrong way round on the needle and I had to knit into the back of the loop. But more to the point, I couldn't get on with holding the yarn in my left hand.

Next, I tried photographing each stage of the knit stitch, and flipping them to the mirror image.

From this . . .

. . . to this

That didn't work either, for much the same reasons.

Eventually, after a lot of trial and error, I hit upon a method which seemed to fix all my issues.

The four steps of forming a right-to-left stitch

To check how it compared to knit-and-purl knitting, I cast on 30 stitches, and knitted a sample where on purl rows I slipped the first stitch, purled four, knitted 20 by my right-to-left method, and then purled the final five. There was no obvious change in the purl rows.

The end result looks the same

I'm sure that this is an established knitting method somewhere, but I've never come across it. Next, I want to check how/if it affects my tension, and experiment with using it for stitches such as yo, k2tog and ssk.

Finally, one other consequence of my being taught to knit at (Scottish) school rather than by my (English) mother is that I knit in the lever style. It's a fairly niche skill where I now live, so on my summer trip up to Edinburgh I was delighted to see this picture by photographer and community worker Sandra George in an exhibition of her work.

Someone knitting the way I do!