On Saturday afternoon I took my first step into being the knitting teacher to a group of people, with a select few of the band from our production of Les Miserables electing to take the gap between the matinee and evening performances to learn a new skill.
Other than this, I’ve been working so hard on my baby blanket…only to fall at almost the final hurdle, running out of yarn in the last four stitches of the last pattern repeat. Argh! I hope I will find more white yarn in my stash, but can’t check at the moment as I’m staying with JS in Kent for a few days.
Knitting Teacher
A few of my ‘students’ had already learnt how to knit and wanted a refresher course – others had no idea at all, and started from scratch. I taught them the wrap cast on and the knit stitch. We didn’t have as much time as I would have liked, but all my students did well! I hope they will carry on.
It was a really interesting experience for me – I have a bit of a thing of giving people a set of knitting needles and yarn and teaching them how to play for birthdays or similar. I’ve never tried it in a group, and I’m sorry to say that I myself got very confused!
One of the best ways to test my own experience, I’ve found, is to try teach it to others, and I’d never encountered some of the problems I had on Saturday, so there’s definitely room for improvement. I’ve already made enquiries about joining a knitting group when I move back to London in September, and although they haven’t gone too far, I have another idea as well – I’d like to volunteer at a community centre or something and teach people how to knit.
Does anybody know anyone else who does anything like this? I’d love to know if there are already people doing it out there, because I have no idea if it’s sensible, worth it, appreciated, or how to go about starting something like this.
Much love,
Corrie xx
I agree with your comment about teaching other people to see how much you know. I had a physics teacher at school who always said to imagine teaching the topic we were learning about to someone else and if we couldn’t do it then we needed to spend more time learning it.
I’ve taught a few people to knit, it’s quite satisfying isn’t it :-)
I too found it really interesting teaching a group to crochet. Something I find so soothing was absolutely demoralising to some. I loved having to really think about how and why you hold yarn, needle, tongue, arm, etc. and as I said to my group, it’s all practice, practice, practice.
There’s a place in Dorking that does all sorts of group knitting and crochet workshops (they also hire sewing machines by the hour, which is how Melanie knows about them), including absolute beginners in groups of up to 5. I expect there’s plenty of other places that do the same, so it might be worth contacting someone like that for advice. Possibly you could ask to go along and watch one to pick up some hints…
Messed up the link…