The 5 Knitting Styles (And How to Knit Them)

Everyone's knitting style is a little different. Whether it's tension, your personal knitting gauge, or the way you wrap your yarn around your fingers. But when it comes to which hand you hold your yarn in, the knitting world is pretty divided. There are five basic knitting styles based on the way the yarn is held and wrapped around the working needle. The names of these styles often are associated with nationalities, like English knitting or Irish Cottage style, but the style you prefer has very little to do with where you grew up, or even where you learned to knit. There are people in England and the United States who do not knit English (also called American) style, and there are plenty of people in continental Europe who would scoff at the idea of holding their yarn in their non-dominant hand, as is done in continental knitting. Likewise, Portuguese knitting is done all over the world, but the name "Portuguese" is just the name that stuck. Because of this, you will see that almost every single one of these knitting styles has two or more alternate names. For more great projects like this, subscribe to our free email newsletter!