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

[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. :)