Mastering Tension

The most difficult thing that my beginning knitters usually run into is mastering their tension.  When I refer to tension here, I’m not talking about gauge (though that is the European term for gauge), although your tension will surely affect your gauge. J  Tension is the natural flexibility of the knitting piece based on your hands, and how tightly you knit. Yarn and needles can also affect tension, however. For example cotton does not stretch as much as wool, so you will have less flexibility in the knitted item when using cotton vs. wool, no matter what your tension is.
    Getting to a point where you knit with consistent tension is all about practice and time. Over time you will generally hold the needles and the yarn the same way, and thus develop your natural tension. But it is important to develop some proper technique as you develop your tension, to avoid challenges later. It’s true that some people tend to be tight knitters, and others are loose. But your mood can also affect your tension. If you are tense, you will probably knit tighter.
    I mostly see beginner’s struggling with how to hold the working yarn in their hand to knit. The problem with teaching tension is that everyone's knitting style is different. In the same way everyone holds a pencil differently when they write, so will they hold the yarn slightly differently when they knit. Continuing with the pencil analogy, you can hold the pencil too tight (and that hurts your hand!) or push down too hard on the paper, and break the lead. Working with yarn while knitting is the same. If you wrap the yarn too tightly around your hand, or pull the yarn too tight when you wrap, your tension will be too tight and your knitted piece may pucker. Or it could make it simply a pain to knit, as you have to keep wrapping and unwrapping the yarn around your fingers. But if you don’t wrap the yarn at all, then your knitted piece won’t have enough form to be consistent and it will be difficult to wrap the yarn at all.
    The key to finding the balance point, as I often try to demonstrate to my students, is to wrap the yarn just enough so when your fingers are closed around the yarn/needle, the yarn doesn’t move. Then when you open your fingers, the yarn slides easily. For me this means I wrap the yarn once around my ring finger, and then rest it over my index finger. When I grip the needle, my fingers close and hold the yarn tight. When I open my hand or release the needle, the yarn will slide easily over my fingers. Harder to explain with words than demonstrate, but hopefully you get the idea.
    The best advice I can give is to try wrapping a) not at all; b) around your fingers once; c) around your fingers more than once. Pull on the other end of the yarn with your hand both open and closed and see how easily the yarn moves.