Knitting dyslexia?

[untonuggan]

I keep having the following situation happen to me. I'll be happily knitting along, say on a 2x2 rib. In my mind I'm thinking, "Knit two, purl two, knit two..." Then at some point I think I've messed up. My mind says I should be knitting, but I'm purling!

Except I'm not. I've just gotten befuddled somehow. My hands know what to do, and hopefully my brain will figure it out before I pull back perfectly good stitching.

My mom seems to have this problem as well, although perhaps more seriously. She just started knitting recently after having been the only woman in her nuclear family who didn't knit. (She crochets, though.) She grew up thinking that knitting was purling and purling was knitting, and so she's been having a hard time "reading her knitting" to tell where she is in a pattern. I generally try to tell her to look where the loop is, but that doesn't seem to stick in her memory.

Do other people have this problem? Any potential solutions?

Comments

[indeliblesasha]

I just stop occasionally and read my knitting, from side to side and bottom to top. It took me *years* to be able to read my knitting, but one day it just clicked. I sat down sometimes and just did like, 20 stitches, and k2, p2, and just watched what I was doing, and stopped a lot to examine how the stitches looked as I went along. It really just took some time, hopefully it will be the same for your mom. ♥

[untonuggan]

That is both reassuring (that you learned) and potentially disheartening (that it might take that long). Thanks for offering your perspective.

[indeliblesasha]

Oh! I totally left out the part where I literally had zero outside assistance, though. I learned to knit from books and the internet, so I had no one to talk to and show me things and physically point at what I should be looking for. Ravelry changed my life because at the very least I suddenly had people to talk things out with. Knitting, I have come to understand, can be a very social experience for as singular and unique as it can be, and sometimes you need an outside perspective to jog things for you.

Local knitting groups could be a huge boon for getting those technical bits to click, for you both, I think. :D (Although I know that can be hard to do if you have social anxiety or health issues that make getting out difficult. But, it's an option.)

Good luck. :)

[19_crows]

It took me a while to learn to read my knitting but yeah, one day it just clicked. I think if someone had shown me see, the top of the stitch goes AWAY from you or TOWARDS you, it would have clicked sooner.

[indeliblesasha]

Yes. That was exactly how I felt "Oh wow, I wish I'd had someone to SHOW me that."

It's kind of nice to know other people have had similar experiences ♥

[alexbayleaf]

I used to be confused by what a "knit stitch" and "purl stitch" looked like because I was, I think, reading them from the other side. I think this came from starting out knitting a lot of garter stitch, where the raised ridges are the most visible feature, and they're formed on the side away from where you're knitting. So for a long time I thought of a knit stitch as looking like "_-_" and a purl stitch as looking like "\/", whereas the reverse is how people more usually think of it.

Don't know if this is relevant, but what you said did remind me of my early confusion so I thought I'd mention it.

[untonuggan]

Yeah, the whole "right side" and "wrong side" thing is something I'm still struggling to explain to my mom.

Perhaps I can help explain it when she knits a swatch...I think the best way to learn may just be to play around with it.

[alexbayleaf]

To me it became clearest when I started knitting a lot in the round. These days I teach newbie knitters by casting on a hat for them on a 16" circular needle and having them just knit like that til they get used to it. Saves having to figure out turning around to knit back and forth, which seems to be where people have the most trouble at first.

[19_crows]

I always put a safety pin on the right side, no matter how obvious it should be, to keep myself from getting confused.

[19_crows]

I do that too. I'm knitting a gansey and there are two panels that on the wrong side are either K, P, K, P (etc) or P, K, P, K. Not only do I get confused about which sequence goes where, but I've also started it right and found myself switched. Luckily, I've learned to check the right side after each of these and make sure it looks right.

Very frustrating!

[moonbathe_skin]

I always think that the purl stitch looks more like a pearl!

[untonuggan]

Hmm, maybe that mnemonic will click with my mom. Thanks!

[eruanna]

I do that too sometimes, especially if I am knitting while watching a movie or talking to someone. Learning to read my knitting helped more than anything, and I am still working on getting better at that. :) It does seem to happen less often, the more I knit, so maybe in time our brains and fingers will be more in sync. ;D

Also, you can drop an incorrect stitch and fix it with a crochet hook or handi tool, so you don't have to rip out a whole row (or several). Learning that was a big breakthrough for me. I can't do it on lace or cables (maybe with more experience) but it works well when I mess up on ribbing or something similar.

[evilawyer]

Just an observation on the picking up of stitches with a crochet hook: I always turn the work so that I'm picking up the stitch as a knit. It feels less for my hand to do it that way as opposed to trying to pick up a purl.

[eruanna]

Good tip, thanks! :)

[evilawyer]

You're welcome. And sorry about leaving out the word "awkward" in there -- I'm a bit too uncoordinated to pick up a purl stitch without hands feeling like I'm making them do contortions.

[eruanna]

I know that feeling. :) I've had arthritis in my hands since I was 20, and am not very coordinated anyway. Knitting does seem to help with keeping my fingers limber, though.

[evilawyer]

Definitely so, although I've found that knitting helps limber up all my fingers except the first joint on my left thumb (injury-related arthritis). That joint, knitting actually makes ache (although not as much as crocheting makes it ache when the fabric gets heavy). A young lady at one of the yarn shops I shop at showed me some square knitting needles from Germany that are supposed to feel better on the fingers --- less stress on the joints, she said. Unfortunately, they didn't have any in the size I needed in stock that day, and the samples were all rigged up to a display board so there was no way to test them out. I'll have to stop in and see if they have any in stock now.

[eruanna]

That's very interesting. I'll have to start looking around for square needles and try them out. Thanks. :)

I switched to Continental style recently. It was almost like learning to knit all over again, but it seems to be much more comfortable for my hands. Less thumb and wrist pain, especially when I overdo it and knit too long without a break.

[evilawyer]

I give Continental a try every once in awhile and can do okay with knit, but I can't seem to master it for purling. Of course, I suppose I could use Continental for knitting and English for the purls. That I only thought of that just now is a bit embarrassing.

[eruanna]

I see that both WEBS and Jimmy Beans Wool have Cubix needles. I can't order anything right now, but might try them eventually if I can't find this type of needle in my area.

You might try YouTube for some different ways of purling and/or holding your yarn that will make it much easier with Continental. The first way I tried was extremely awkward and I did go back to English. Just experimenting for awhile, I came up with a different way of holding my yarn that made purling just as easy as English for me. Here is one method that looks easy and comfortable. I can't find a video that does it the way I do it, but you could just play with it for awhile until you find a 'picking' or 'flicking' method that is comfortable for you.

[untonuggan]

I felt so proud when I figured out how to do that the other day! I just wish it worked for more complicated things...

[evilawyer]

This may be really off the wall, but I grew up thinking of purl as "punto riso" --- literally "rice stitch." Thinking back I have to say that it helped me a great deal in terms of being able to keep track of knitting versus purling because of the visual appearance of the purl. It looks like dried rice, so I always looked for the bump that looks like dried rice when I was trying to figure out where I was in my work.

[jumpuphigh]

This is one of those things that will just click one day and you will go, "ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh." Until then, I think it helps to do large swatches of one stitch or the other. For example, you could do a baby blanket where you have large squares of knit, then large squares of purl.

[inchainz]

I'm horribly lysdexic so when I'm doing ribbing I think of it as "two left, two right" or "left, left; right, right", or whatever type of ribbing I'm knitting. (I'm a picker, so right = K & left = P.) Since I figured this out I've made far less mistakes with ribbing -- especially once I get into a rhythm.

So I guess my tip is to figure out what kind of rhythm works for you & use that.

This, & learning how to read my stitches has done wonders for my completion ratio. :)