Knitting - holding the yarn????

I think, whichever way you knit, speed and technique comes with practice. I’m a very quick knitter after 60 years but slow at crochet after just one. I think it’s more about enjoyment than speed

I hold the needle under my right arm and knit no need to let go

I do it the Tanith way as well, it's quick and easy. My DM taught me when I was about 7 and that's the way I've been doing it ever since.

I do hold the yarn in my left hand when crocheting but have to hold the hook like a knife, not a pen.

That's how I knit Callistemon To many people's disgust it's also how I hold my yarn for crochet, hook and yarn in the same hand Never had any complaints about the finished articles.

I followed a couple of videos when starting some new crochet projects and everyone seemed to be holding their hooks in a different way to me. My tension though is good and my stitches flow which they certainly don't if I pick up knitting needles.

I hold the yarn between thumb and forefinger, and the rest of it goes through my fist to the ball. My forefinger controls the yarn, and the right hand needle is controlled by my thumb. The left needle doesn't move so much, but the left hand takes care of it. I've just had to check to find out how I did it, as it is automatic.

I knit fairly quickly, though, and don't find it laborious. I have been doing it that way since I was 7, and can't unlearn it now.

www.learn2knit.co.uk/knitting/holding-needles.php

I knit like this but I don't know which method it is.

I found the clip - it was on Great Expectations - the adult Estella (Valerie Hobson) - I was mesmerised at the speed at which she knitted.

I've been knitting your way (drop the needle) for nearly 65 years now. However, I balance the two needles with my left hand so the right needle doesn't actually drop.

I've tried the other method as it looked so easy but I'm stuck in my ways. The knitting still turns out successfully and I mainly do intricate styles that involve cable needles.

Round the right hand needle, I should have said!

I hold it between thumb and forefinger, @Callistemon, but it’s so instinctive, I really had to stop and think!
Right forefinger is constantly on the move, though, putting the yarn round the left hand needle.

My mother taught taught me fairly early on how to knit without the laborious method. She said it would make my knitting much quicker and more even, and it did.

You wind the yarn round your little finger, then under your 2 middle fingers, then over the top of your index finger, say just below your nail.
It’s then so quick and easy to put the yarn round the needle tip, and it ‘feeds’ easily through your fingers. Well worth a little bit of practice! A few practice rows should do it.

Not long ago I saw a girl on the bus very laboriously knitting the other way and was dying to show her, but didn’t, in case she thought I was an interfering/bossy old bat!

How do you all hold the RH needle?
Like a pen or a knife?
In all the videos I watch, the knitter holds it like a knife.

I hold it like a pen so I have to let go of the needle to flick the yarn but don't take my hand off.

I saw someone knitting on television over the weekend and she was incredibly quick and dainty and for the life of me I can't remember who it was or what programme/film it was on. It's driving me mad, as I even remarked on it to DP at the time how lovely it looked!

I've just been looking at a video (by an American called Autumn Wintersgill - yes, really). She calls what the OP has described - taking the right hand off the needle to put the yarn round - the 'English method', and the 'flicking' style, where you have the yarn round the index finger and just flick it over the needle, the 'American method' .

Well, I'm sorry to disagree Autumn Wintersgill, but all the knitters I know wrap the yarn around their fingers and 'flick' it round the needle. It was the way I was taught by my very English mother, who in turn was taught by her very English mother. It was also the way we were taught at school.

Gosh, if that's how American knitters think we knit here, they must wonder how we ever get any garments finished!

Sorry -
I don't knit like any of the ways described

YouTube

I've just looked up various styles of knitting so that I could link to a Toutube video of how I knit but realise that I don't know it like any of them.

So my style could be unique, taught me by my mother.
I wont try to explain it; it suits me though!
?

I wind the wool twice round middle finger of right hand and all you need to then is to put the wool round the needle without letting go of the needle, paying out the wool bit by bit. It is hard to describe but easy to do!!

My dear old Mum could knit so fast you could barely see her fingers move - oh, that my efforts could be so elegant! I think the way you arrange the wool over/around your fingertips makes all the difference.

By comparison my efforts look slow and awkward but I still make progress. If you enjoy the results I don't think you should get too hung up about the 'right' method.

tanith

I’ve always wound the wool round 3 fingers on my right hand so as the right hand needle goes through the next stitch I only need to stretch the fingers forward to hook the wool round the tip and pull it through. I don’t know what method it is but it just evolved when I learnt from my Mum.

I think that's what I do.
It's odd, but I've knitted for 60 years and unless I went and did a row I wouldn't be able to describe it!

Mind you, I have been crocheting instead during lockdown.

crocheter

I 'throw' the yarn and I'm sure there are no right or wrong ways to knit, just what suits you. However, some will be faster than others.

Rosiebee, you sound like an expert crocheted and I am a novice, so is there a right way and a wrong way to hold a crochet hook? I think that the right way is the opposite way to holding a knitting needle but, as a knitter, I just can't seem to do that.

Welshwife my Mum w who taught me was also Welsh so maybe its the 'Welsh' method ?