For right handed knitting (which is what this info is all about), you start each row with a needle full of stitches in your left hand, while your right hand holds the empty needle, which then gradually fills up with new stitches as you complete each row.
You hold the yarn in your right hand, and loop it over the right hand needle to create each stitch.
When my Grandma taught me to knit, she insisted that I use the complicated method of holding and looping wool that I still do today. I hated those first lessons, and I can still remember that ball of fiery frustration in the pit of my stomach! But now I’m sooooo glad that she instilled that muscle memory into me!! Thank you Grandma!
You see, when you first start to knit, you feel like it doesn’t matter how you hold the yarn – there are so many things going on that it seems like the least of your worries. It’s so tempting to opt for the ‘drop and grab’ technique, where you drop your right hand needle and balance it on your lap / under your arm, then grab the yarn for a loop over with your fist, then drop the yarn and grab the needle again.
But you’ll soon become much quicker at completing each stitch, and before you know it, it’s the yarn looping that’s holding you back. Plus it can be difficult to create nicely even textured knitted fabric when you don’t keep a constant tension on the yarn between knitting and ball.
It’s also much easier to learn a single technique to start with, rather than having to re-learn a new yarn looping method just as you’re getting confident with the rest.
So here’s my suggested method for yarn looping that I think combines the good things about Grandma’s technique but isn’t quite so daunting to get started with.
How to hold the yarn
Start out with this a little way through a row.
Using your right hand, grab the yarn near your right needle (balancing the needle for now), using a fist, the back of your hand facing upwards.
Then bring your right thumb out of the fist and hold it straight out to the side. Hook that under your right needle. See, you’re holding needle AND yarn already! But how about the looping?
Bring your right index finger (first finger) out of the fist and point it straight out. Keeping it straight, move it gently between the right needle and the yarn that goes through the rest of your fist. Move your finger slightly up and very slightly to the right. Then bend that first finger slightly. You can see the yarn is now nicely guided over your index finger, which is controlling just where that yarn goes, while your fist is keeping the yarn coming through from the ball at a nice even tension.
When you’re ready to make a stitch, straighten and bend your index finger to make the loop over the right needle.
It’s a little fiddly at first, but you’ll soon be looping like lightning!