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My weirdo continental knitting style

I have a couple hand-related issues that make knitting in the ‘throwing’ style a bit awkward. First of all, my wrists are prone to fatigue (wimps). Second, my left thumb was broken when I was little and healed sort of backwards and having to support everything with that hand is uncomfortable. As is long-tail cast-on, which I keep intending to teach myself to do backwards..but anyway. I tried to learn both traditional continental and combined, both of which I found difficult. With continental, everything is peachy if I’m doing long rows of knits or purls. In fact that’s still my preferred method. The trouble comes when I need to do something like seed or ribbing. I could never get the hang of it. The famous ‘combined’ style just required too much brain power, with the having to untwist stitches and whatnot, tbh. So here is what I worked out:

For purling, the yarn comes from over the back, and is hooked around my index finger.

For knitting, the yarn is kicked to the back with my middle finger. Yarn can be hooked around extra fingers for tension as needed.

This seems to work pretty well, though for huge yarn like Big Wool or Ribbon Twist, I’d probably just go back to throwing. I’d also probably be using sticks in those instances. My weirdo method works best for me when using circular needles because my hands can curve to a better angle, I think. Incidentally, those lace addis with the non-slippy coating are brilliant.

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