For years I have been rowing out when I knit flat stockenette. My purls were way too loose. This hasn’t always been the case; I have some things I knit years ago that are perfect. And it only happened on flat stockenette, not ribbing, seedstitch, etc. Whenever I purled more than one or two stitches, it was incredibly loose.
None of the usual tips fixed it. Purling tighter didn’t work. Using a smaller needle for the purl rows didn’t work. Tensioning the purl rows but not the knit rows made them somewhat more even, but didn’t fix it completely, was uncomfortable, I kept forgetting to not tension the knit rows, and when I did remember it made the knits way too loose.
So for years I just avoided flat stockenette. But now I want to knit something that I don’t want to go through the trouble of converting to in-the-round. So, I was determined to figure this out. I watched myself knit slowly, then I watched myself purl slowly, until I figured out what I was doing differently when there was more than two purl stitches. I was putting my thumb on the yarn in a way that loosened the stitch when the yarn was in the front. This was after I had tightened up the purl stitch, so no matter how tightly I purled, I was re-loosening them. When the yarn was in back it didn’t affect anything, and when doing ribbing, seed stitch, etc. I was putting my thumb in that place after I moved the yarn to the back, so those purl stitches weren’t getting loosened.
So all I had to do was make sure to keep my thumb out of that specific place, and my tension is perfect. I kind of feel dumb for not doing this a long time ago, but I also feel victorious for figuring this out.