Knitting: You’re Doing It Wrong . . .

I went on a girls’ getaway with my friend CL this past weekend–it was nice. We hadn’t done anything like that for quite a while, so just spending time together was a treat. We went to an author event, saw some of a new city, had some good dinners, shared a couple of bottles of decent Riesling, and played cards while we caught up on each others’ lives.

We also went to a knitting store–a cutesy place that sells fancy expensive yarn that I would be terrified to touch at my current skill level. I’m a rank beginner, so I happily buy my yarn at Michael’s and Hobby Lobby. Not that I don’t appreciate gorgeous yarn–I certainly do, but $25+ per skein is way out of my financial comfort zone. And I’m really not enough of a devoted knitter to drool over fancy alpaca or silk yarns. But it was fun to wander through the shop and touch the threads and see the lovely things that folks have made.

One sour note–one of the women who worked in the store really got after me because I’m knitting left-handed. She believes I’d be a better knitter if I learned to do it right-handed. Um . . . okay, but here’s the thing. I’m left-handed. It took me weeks, literally, to master the two simple knitting stitches of knit and purl. I watched YouTube videos, I read instruction books, I practiced and ripped out and practiced and ripped out again and again. Truthfully, it was hard. I’m not a crafty person at all–that’s not my gift, so none of this comes naturally to me. Being left-handed is just one more handicap to my being a gifted knitter.

So to do something like knitting for my own pleasure means that I have to do it the way I’m comfortable doing it. I’m probably not ever going to be knitting Fair Isle sweaters or gorgeous alpaca socks or mittens. But I can make baby blankets and scarves and dishrags and maybe even one day, an afghan. To be honest, it was a little demoralizing to be told that I’ve been doing it wrong. Sorta sucked some of the pleasure out of the creative process for me. I don’t want to re-learn how to knit. I’m perfectly happy knitting left-handed, so sorry, lady. I’m glad you’re knitting amazing garments–I respect your talent. But, I’m going to keep knitting in my own awkward left-handed way. I think my baby blankets will keep my new great-nephews and nieces perfectly warm and my dishrags will wash dishes just fine and my scarves will look fabulous even though they’ve been knitted “wrong.”