knitting | Knitting dyslexia?

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untonuggan posting in

knitting

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?

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From:

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.

From:

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.

From:

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.