When I learned to knit 24 years ago, I never dreamed that one day I would be teaching this ancient craft to inquiring minds. My journey as a teacher has helped me to understand the craft in ways that I otherwise may never have fully appreciated.- Realizing that a stitch has somehow become twisted on your needles and knowing how to set that stitch straight....
- Picking up a drop stitch and knowing the difference between how to seat the knit versus the purl......
- Joining a newly joined skein or color and knowing how to weave in the ends so that it doesn't show or unravel ......
- Adding a thin "fuzzy" yarn to give your garment a completely different look and feel.....
These are just a few of the things I now realize I have taken for granted over the years. Teaching has made me much more aware of individual techniques that, once learned, apparently become burned into the brain and get jumbled up with other non-assuming tasks.
It pains me to see a knitter struggling, strangling the yarn in total frustration because they cannot grasp the concept of a new technique. Knitting is supposed to be relaxing! "Okay, let's stop for a minute and re-evaluate exactly what is happening" has become my most often used sentence lately. The most difficult thing to accept is that some people just aren't cut out to be knitters. Not in this lifetime, or any lifetime to come...... Sad, but true. And as the teacher, how do you tell them their efforts are futile? Well, I now know that the sign of a good teacher is "you don't!" You simply encourage them as much as you can and let them decide whether or not to continue the pursuit of becoming a knitter.
After all is said and done, the ultimate awareness that knitting has inconspicuously become an extension of my life has been the most gratifying part of this journey.
Thank you my students, for giving the teacher a lesson!
