Guys, I have something crazy to say: I have been knitting wrong for the last three years. More specifically, I have been purling wrong. Remember I was working on a greyhound snood and my two sections of stockinette looked so different? The top part was done in the round on DPNs, the bottom flat on straights. Well, another knitter mentioned that the alternate rows, the purl rows, on the flat section looked twisted. She was very kind and said it didn’t look bad, it wasn’t wrong, just maybe that’s why it was different. Well, I went to Youtube and looked at purling videos and behold! I have been wrapping my yarn the wrong way from the beginning! This is the video I watched, just because it was the first one, and they even show the “incorrect” way later. So yes, my purl rows were twisted. I’m sure it happened because I taught myself to purl from a book and never had anyone watching to say, oh hey, that’s different!

This was a huge Aha! moment for me. Why? Because from the beginning, I’ve found it harder to knit into purl stitches, and it made me dislike stockinette knit flat and garter stitch in the round. This is why! So if I can train myself to do it correctly, it will make my knitting easier. It also explained why so many people dislike purling. I never understood it, because for me it was as quick and easy as knitting. But this new way isn’t as easy, and partly that’s because it’s new to me, and I have to retrain my fingers, teach them new muscle memory.

The other cool thing is that my Knitting SIL pointed out that if I really want to keep purling the way I do (which is a bit faster and easier than the ‘correct’ way, I think) I can remedy it on the next row by knitting into the back loops. I probably won’t use that as my regular method, because I do want to get into the habit of using the right techniques, but it’s nice to know I have options.

Now, I know, there’s not a “right” or “wrong” way to knit, and I agree that my twisted stockinette section looks pretty cool. I like it, and it can be a technique in my tool kit. But there are traditional, accepted forms of the knit and purl stitches, and I was bucking tradition. I want to be a proper knitter, and for me, that means learning to do it the traditional way. Then while I’m knitting, I can make the choice to do it however I want! And I might just want to keep knitting in the round so it’s not much of an issue. 🙂 This is another Yoda hat. I made three this weekend (base hats only, no ears yet) while I was watching the finals of the Australian Open. We’re testing Sling TV for a week, and the sports part is great because I can just use the ESPN app on the Apple TV. But the Sling TV app itself is kind of terrible. It crashes A LOT and I have a lot of problems trying to use AirPlay to show the video from the iPad on the TV. It’s pretty disappointing. We probably won’t sign up; for $20 a month, I want consistency and reliability. So I guess we’ll go back to just having Hulu and Netflix. It sure was nice having tennis to watch again though!