Understanding Eastern Knitting and Western Knitting Styles and Knitting Faster
January 6, 2012 | 
Author Understanding Eastern Knitting and Western Knitting Styles and Knitting Fast
In this article I will explain the difference between the Eastern and Western styles of knitting and how not to get confused. There will be some instruction in how to do them, yet while this is not so much a knitting lesson, what you learn here may be of great use to the beginner or transitioner.
Eastern European knitting style has stirred a lot of interest as an alternative to English and Continental styles lately. There is also a blended style called Combined or Combination knitting, which frankly confuses me so far. I will get to that later.
Western knitting styles are distinguished from Eastern by the turn of the loops on the needles. This is an important distinction and will help you understand what you are doing as you knit and purl. Western styles include English, Continental, Portuguese and a few others. Eastern European has a few varieties also, and there are “twisted” and “untwisted” methods. I like the Eastern because you don’t have to keep moving the yarn from back to front and front to back when you are knitting, but there are a few conversions you need to make to use western stitches and patterns. I can’t go into that here or now as I’m not fully edumakated on those matters, but maybe later.
How to tell them apart:
Go grab some knitting still on the needles. Imagine you are looking south. The left is your east, the right is your west. Now look at the loops on the left needle. If the leg of the loop on your side of the needle is closer to the left/East then it’s an Eastern loop. If it’s nearer the right/West and the tip of the left needle then it’s a Western loop.
How eastern and western loops are created:
When you insert the needle through a loop on the left needle (for right handers) you will be wrapping the yarn around the needle one way or the other. If your put your needle on the left/east side of the working yarn and bring the yarn across it, between you and the needle and to the left/east – wrapping counter clockwise – then you are going to create an eastern loop with that stitch.
Conversely, if you put your right needle to the right/west of the working yarn and bring the yarn across the right needle toward the west – wrapping counter-clockwise – you will create a western loop.
When I first started knitting I tried learning a form of Eastern European Untwisted knitting taught by a lys owner near me and got confused and had a mix of eastern and western loops that made everything a useless mess. I’ve been looking into Eastern again lately because Gail, my lys owner, uses that form and knits very fast and I want to knit faster, so I’m going to stop by there soon and get a refresher course.
My confusion with “combined” knitting is that it seems to have you freely converting your western loops to eastern loops so that when you turn the work it seems you will have to knit a different style or compensate for all the loops that are facing different ways. I watched a youtube video of “Russian” knitting that did just this. It just doesn’t make sense to me to do that. I will look into it more later and maybe write about it, but for now my recommendation is to learn a non-combined method if you are looking for a new style or want to be more efficient.
By the way, combined/combination knitting is not Eastern, as some people have stated, but a mix.
In combined knitting, just as in western styles, purls knits have you move the working yarn to your side of the left needle, and for knit stitches it’s on the far side of the needle. Eastern European knitting appears to have the working yarn always on the far side of the needles, and Portuguese has it always on the near side with the yarn passing around your neck or through a pin or pendant at your chest. These latter two options sound a bit more efficient but there are those who are very practiced and efficient at Continental as well and can move that yarn fast. Sorry, but English knitting is just too much movement for me, having to let go of the right needle to throw the yarn and all that.
As you will read in this blog, I’m fond of Portuguese style – made popular by Andrea Wong – and it’s fully western, easy to learn and moderately fast, but I want to go faster. I saw a youtube video of Eunny demostrating entrelac and she knits so fast: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcLxMt9GehM&list=FL1BpX65EaVyBJXqac2Kxh-Q&feature=mh_lolz . By the way, her stitches are oddly uneven in that video but I think that is due to how she is working the entrelac squares. One thing that makes her fast is how she holds and manages the yarn in her left hand, which I have yet to master. This part of knitting – controlling the working yarn – is critical for successful and fast work. I tried to each myself knitting from books and almost gave up until I discovered I could hold the yarn the way I do for crochet, and then I also discovered Portuguese style.
Related Posts:
Posted in 
Tags: 