Techniques for Knits and Purls

I taught myself to knit from a book. For the most part anyway. There was a time I knitted a wristband with the help of a friend Melissa, who I have not seen in easily five years. When I learned from this book, I skipped that whole part about knitting while holding your yarn. I don't at all. I drop it and pick it up every stitch. I'm sure a lot of you are thinking "that is SO lame" but for me, there was no other way to do it. This also goes with how I knit and purl.

I was showing my friend Debbie a knit and a purl stitch one day, when Angie (my roomie) noticed that I pull my yarn and knit it differently from her. I never really gave it much thought, there are tons of different techniques to achieve the same stitch, but today when I was watching videos online at http://www.knittinghelp.com, I noticed the different way to knit and purl. So I tried it. And I can't help but wonder which one is better. I'm still working on that sweater sleeve, so I did about four rows with the "new" technique and noticed the stitches looked a bit cleaner (that's my way of saying you can see them better in the wool yarn), but not by much.

I think I'm going to just finish the sleeves the way I knitted the rest of the sweater and knit my next project with the new technique. I'll let you know how it goes.