I have no idea how to do this. Sometimes I pick up the yarn and it runs nicely, sometimes I end up with, say, 1 inch of length that just keeps getting shorter the more stitches I make and I must manually pull more from the ball instead of me just getting more yarn from the ball naturally with each stitch. ("1 inch" was just made up for this example, never actually measured it.) I have no idea what is affecting this. But the tension is awful and my practice piece looks like this. Please help me!
I knit continental by default and do this too. I think it's much easier getting the tension with my hands as I have more control. There are so many factors that determine how smoothly yarn comes of the skein (e.g. the fiber itself) so I don't want to depend on that.
Usually I tension with my index finger, one wrap for grippy yarn and two wraps for slick yarn.