Knitting Quirks (or 'Confessions of a Sloppy Knitter'?)

There are several things that I know I *always* do 'wrong' when knitting. Despite knowing that they are wrong I still do them, and I've learned to work-around my mistakes as a matter of course, rather than just doing the things right in the first place. I'll give you a couple of examples.
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This plant has nothing to do with the content of this post, but I loved the texture and sense of a "last hoorah" of colour
Firstly, I always pick up stitches by the left 'leg', even though I know picking them up by the right leg is correct. I always pick them up that way and then knit into the back loop on the next row to untwist the stitches. At the moment I'm working on several new designs and I'm swatching a lot and trying out new ideas - there's a lot of 'ripping out' of rows, and so a lot of picking up stitches, but I still don't pick them up the right way. (Probably a result of dropping many stitches while learning to knit and being so thankful when I could grab them any-which-way, I didn't care about their orientation.) 

Another example arises when knitting yarn overs between purl and knit stitches. I know there is a correct way to do it (to ensure they are the tight size and not twisted) but I'd say they are right only about half of the time. I don't even think about it now - I just get the yarn over that needle in one way or another and sort it out on the next row - if they are mounted the wrong way, I simply knit into the stitch in the way that will keep the yarn over open and untwisted.

I'm not really sure if these are quirks of my knitting, or whether I'm just a sloppy knitter. It seems to work out in the end project so I'm calling it the former. How about you? Do you have similar knitting quirks?  What do you do which almost always results in a work-around? 

9 comments

  1. It took me teaching classes to sort out some of these bad habits.

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  2. I'm not sure I should confess on here but I've never made a swatch in my life - this could explain some of the oddly fitting garments I've produced ;)

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  3. I can't be doing with ssk - I knit 2tog tbl - it's easier and quicker, my version looks neater than if I try to ssk...

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  4. I never make swatches either - it usually turns out okay though...!

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  5. I do the same thing when picking up dropped stitches! And I always find it easier to do it with the word turned WS facing. I say as long as it's correct in the end, it's not really that wrong!

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  6. Yes this made me smile......I do this too. I totally understand just being relieved to get all the stitches back on and sort it out on the next row.

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  7. I pick up the wrong way too, and sort out on the next row! I never ever do swatches and I have a problem with my tension that means all my stocking stitch knitting sit in little rows of 2, never bothered to work out why my purl rows are tighter/looser than my knit rows - easier to count in 2's!! but a pain when its reverse st st and visible on the front!

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  8. My worst habit is not swatching. Although as I develop my design work I am slowly learning to embrace the swatch.

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  9. Worst habit...I have many. The one that stands out in my mind is not being willing to frog to correct a mistake. I will do almost anything to avoid frogging. The one that stands out in my mind most was a sweater I made in the 90's a huge blue sweater with miles of knitting. And right smack in the back was a dropped stitch. I merely popped a safety pin on it and wore the sweater for years that way. Now a days I would have at least darned that st and wove in the ends to hold it invisibly. I had a dropped st in my knitting yesterday and didn't frog either.

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