I attempted to teach two women how to knit tonight at the library. The time alloted to the class was too short -- 45 - 50 minutes is not enough time to teach casting on AND the knit stitch -- but they were both starting to get the hang of it by the end. If we had had another half hour they would have nailed it, they could have gone home and continued knitting their respective pieces. Maybe I'll ask to start the class earlier next time. As it was the librarians were putting on their coats and shutting down the computers as we laid down our needles.
How this came about was that a library patron wanted to start a knitting and crochet group that would meet at the library. She is a master crocheter and was willing to teach anyone that wanted to learn. I jumped at the chance to knit in a group and offered to be the knitting teacher. The group started in November, meeting twice a month from 6 - 7 pm at the library. This is a tiny village of 888 souls hence it is a tiny group. A couple times there were only the crocheter, her 12-yo daughter, and I. So I taught her daughter to knit.
Tonight the crochet woman wasn't there because her family is sick, so it was just me and two knitting newbies. I told them a scarf was a great first project -- aren't I the clever one? One really is doing a scarf as her first project. She had already bought the needles (Brittany birch!) and yarn (Ella Rae -- the link is for a worsted weight and hers is a bit heavier, but colorwise looked somewhere between #2 and #5 on the linked color card) and that's what she cast on for. The other didn't bring any supplies, which was what I had expected of both of them. I had brought some spare US#8s and 9s that I got in an eBay grab bag of needles, and let her choose from the worsted-weight yarns I had brought -- orange ack, heathery purple ack, deep pink wool, and harvest gold wool. You could have knocked me over with a feather when she chose the day-glo orange, but she said it was so wild that she had to have it. Go for it, I said.
The scarf lady had knit many, many years ago but claimed not to remember a thing. Maybe so, but she was making good cast-on stitches and good knit stitches by the end. The orange ack lady is a crocheter, so she was quite comfortable doing a cable cast-on with a knitting needle and a crocket hook; when she started actually knitting it took her a bit to get the hang of how to catch the yarn and pull it through the stitch on the needle, but she too was getting it by the end.
Do you remember how hard it is to hold the yarn and both needles and the knitting and still manage to maneuver the needles through the loops and not split the yarn and stick the needle through the right opening and remember which way to wrap the yarn and how to pull the loop through even though the needle doesn't have a hook on the end to make it easier and which is the old stitch that has to come off the left needle? I didn't until I watched these beginners struggle. We should all pat ourselves on the back for the manual dexterity we have managed to embed in our brains and our hands. I was proud of them as they kept at it and began to be able to recognize when something wasn't right. It was hard not to grab it out of their hands when they got stuck but [mostly] I managed not to.
Unfortunately, the class won't meet again for two weeks. I hope they are able to retain what they learned tonight. And I wish I were a better teacher. We will all improve together.
