Untwisting your stitches in the round

Depending on how you wrap your yarn around the needle, a left-handed combined continental knitter may find that her stitches are twisted when knitting in the round. This happens if you ‘scoop’ the yarn when knitting normally (see this tutorial for an example). There are two methods for fixing this – in both methods, you knit through the leading leg – it just depends on whether the leading leg is on the front or back of your needle. And that will depend on which way you wrap your stitches when knitting. Both methods are demonstrated below:

With the leading leg on the front of the needle

Knit stitches placed on double pointed needles, but of course this works on circular needles as well

If you knit the first row of the round as you do for flat knitting, you'll find the leading leg on the front of the needle on the second row of knitting. This is because there is no purl stitch to reseat the stitch in the orientation for knit rows

For each knit row hereafter, you need to knit into the leading leg.Note that instead of moving the needle left to right into the loop, the needle moves in a more right to left motion to open up the loop before pulling the wool through.

As you pull the wool through, check to ensure you are creating an even and open stitch, so that the stitch isn't twisted at the base

With your leading leg on the back of the needle

If you prefer to have your leading leg on the back, as you would for flat knitting, you will need to wrap your wool in the opposite direction from the start. This image shows the leading leg on the back of the needle

Insert your needle from left to right into the leading leg of the stitch, as for flat knitting

Instead of scooping the wool with your working needle, wrap the wool in the opposite direction so it goes over the top of the working needle

Pull the wool through to finish the stitch

Both methods are perfectly fine – just remember which one you’re doing and be consistent throughout the peice of work.

You can see more knitting tutorials on my Knitting for Lefties page, including long-tail cast on, knit and purl stitches, and left and right slanting decreases.