Teaching Knitting

Yesterday night I spent a couple of hours teaching how to knit to a friend of mine. I'm a decent knitter, but I've never taught anyone before. Its hard. Knitting is one of those things that requires a lot of concentration and muscle memory. You have to know my feel how much tension to put on the yarn. You have to get the needle through the loop correctly, bring the yarn around to create a new loop correctly, and somehow keep control of two long pieces of awkward bamboo.

I have knitted enough to be able to do simple patterns with out much thought. I can multi task like a pro. I'm not perfect, but I can usually go back and fix any hugh mistakes. But when you are teaching, you some how have to not only give the basics, hold the needles like so and the yarn goes this way. But there is also the feeling that you some how have to express. Somehow the student has to learn how the tension is suppose to feel, what the rhythm is like. In a way its just like a dance, you have to learn the steps. But knowing the steps means nothing if you can't do them to the music.

Its fun to teach things that you aren't necessarily a export at. Teaching is really the best way to learn your self, to have to express and vocalize what and why you are doing something, makes it sink deeper in. And  hopefully in the future I will have someone to knit with. I love knitting and talking. It makes time go by really fast.