Let\’s see…in the last week the whole family (including me) has been completely sick. Drippy noses, hacking coughs, fevers…the whole deal. M. and T. are just about well and I\’m going to live, but A. is really sick. It seems that he has bronchitis. He\’s missed a whole week of work, so anyone who knows him, knows that he\’s really bad off.

Last Saturday I really wasn\’t in the mood to go back to my afghan so I dug out the Chenille Thick & Quick for my hat and scarf set. I finished both of them by Sunday. I love them! So furry and warm and perfect for this past week\’s deep freeze.

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I then started working on this poncho from Lionbrand. I love working with the Microspun yarn. It is so soft and yummy. But my first venture into pattern design was a complete failure. I decided that instead of one large rectangle, I wanted to make it in two rectangles seamed together so that the points of the poncho would hang better. Well there is a reason there are no seams in this pattern (except for sewing two edges together to form a neck opening). After knitting two rectangles and trying for ages to sew them together in some sort of fashion, I discovered that it simply could not be done in any sort of decent way. It looked hideous! So I frogged the whole thing.

This leads to the title of the blog entry. Continental knitting. In the meantime my new issue of Creative Knitting arrives in the mail and I promptly read the thing cover to cover. A very interesting article discusses the merits of continental knitting versus English knitting. Now, since I have long been a crocheter, I originally tried to teach myself to knit continental style but met with complete failure. I figured now that I have about three years or so of knitting experience under my belt, maybe I could do it this time around.

I am a complete convert. Yes, it\’s a bit awkward right now. Yes, my tension is way off. Yes, I\’m knitting as slow as a complete beginner. But, I can see the potential. I\’m already gaining speed and my hands are already relaxing. My tension is still tighter than before and it\’s hard to slide the stitches on the needles. But it\’s getting better all the time.

I\’ll keep you posted as I work my way through the Microspun poncho. I figured that would be a good project to practice on because changes in tension wouldn\’t be too noticeable.