Learning to knit....again!

So, I've been neglecting my blogging commitment. Again. I struggle with self imposed deadlines, somehow I just don't manage to take them seriously enough. Or, perhaps I just don't take myself seriously enough...but that's another kind of blog so I'll stop there.

Anyway, one reason I've not been blogging is that I have, again, been trying to improve my knitting technique. I've always been a thrower. But not in the efficient 'english' way, as my mother used to do, where you hold the working needle (for most, the needle in your right hand) much as you would hold a pencil. For some reason this always felt incredible awkward to me, and I just couldn't get my index finger to do the right thing and loop the yarn neatly over the tip of the needle. On top of that, I would constantly lose grip of the yarn and so the tension would end up all over the place. It just felt totally wrong. So I've always just compromised and developed a reasonable efficient way that included dropping the right hand needle in order to make each stitch - the way I learned to do when I was little. It's worked nicely really, even if it is 'wrong' (I don't really think it's wrong, I just really want to be better knitter).

But, I've spent a little time each day over the last couple of weeks fiddling around with other techniques. Once again I abandoned the 'english' throwing hold. It still feels awful, I will never get it right. Instead, I concentrated on the 'german' method, with the working yarn looped over the left index finger. This worked pretty well. It makes sense and is so efficient, picking up the yarn with the tip of the working needle. But I am still struggle with the tensioning of the yarn. I've found that I struggle to feed the yarn effectively, resulting in the stitches getting tighter and tighter as I go.

On top of that, I got in a pickle with making purl stitches too. I discovered that I could make them, but then would have to do the following knit by knitting into the back of the stitches because the way I was making them twisted them and made them sit the wrong way on the needles.

Now I'm working on an idiosyncratic way of feeding the yarn with my right hand again, but holding the needle from the top and not from underneath. It's coming along, slowly, and I think it will work out. But there's a problem.

Now I can't knit like I used to. Now it all feels wrong, no matter how I do it. It's a very odd feeling.

How do you knit? What method do you use? Have you figured out ways that are unique to you?