That happy box could only mean one thing:



My books arrived! They are great so far. And after about 10 min. of looking at SnB Nation I made an amazing discovery. I really am a weird ass knitter! Allow me to demonstrate.

I thought up until now that I knit some sort of continental way but wasn't really sure what the difference was. Here is how you should knit a stitch continental style (for a right hander anyway):




While holding the yarn in the left hand, insert the needle from left to right in the front loop of the first stitch,




Wrap the yarn over the top of the needle,




and pull it through the stitch and off the needle.

Here's how I usually do it:




Insert the needle from left to right through the back loop,




Wrap the yarn over the top of the needle,




Pull the yarn through and off the needle.

Ok. So I knit into the back loop. No big deal. Some patterns call for this at times, I just do it all the time. That's fairly unamazing. The amazing part comes when I do I purl stitch. Here is what you are supposed to do:




Insert the needle from right to left into the front loop,




Wrap the yarn over the top of the needle from front to back,




Pull the yarn through the stitch and off the left needle.

Here's how I usually do it:




Insert the right needle into the front loop from right to left (same as above),




Since the yarn is behind the right needle, push the right needle through the loop on the left needle with the yarn behind the right needle,




Pull the stitch off the left needle.

And look, when done in this combination the fabric comes out just fine.

(My apologize for the quality of the pictures here but it's really hard to set up the camera and do the timer thing and get what you want when you don't have five hands!)

No twisted stitches there. So apparently my method of purling is completely weird. Who knew?! This explains why I can never teach anyone else who has already learned something from someone else and why I can never figure out what the heck other people are doing. Great mystery solved.

The biggest problem with my method, I get twisted stitches when I work in the round. On socks and such I have to knit the "real" way or my stitches are twisted. In the flat, no problem. This also explains the problem I had when I started the Quick Cable Sweater. Lauren had shown me that my stitches on my magic stripes socks were twisted and how to do a knit stitch properly. But when I tried to do the sweater on the flat and it involved purling it came out twisted.

So there is my discovery. Just had to share. And now back to my weird ass knitting...