Staring Back at Terminology Fear

Let’s face it, knitting has many categories of fear.

There’s the fear of circular knitting needles. Speaking from experience, how many of us beginners looked at circular knitting needles and cringed? What was up with that idea of no end, just two points and a skinny little strand of cable that I was convinced would cut right through the yarn. If nothing else, I was sure that the live loops would shrink and I wouldn’t be able to get them up onto the main needle part at the end. Fear. I avoided circular knitting needles for years.

Kind of like discovering continental style, once I used circular knitting needles for the first time I saw that smiling woman at the open door, waving to come on in to this wonderful world of circular knitting needles. Oh, such lovely dears, the circular knitting needle. Once you work out the kinks from being held in that unforgiving packaging, that cable makes life so much easier.

Double pointed needles. Argh!! Little pointy sticks sticking out all over the place. The first time I used them I was convinced that all the live stitches would drop off. They didn’t. Well, not on the wood ones. I have some metal DPNs that it’s come close a few times. It was just fear holding me back though. People have been knitting with these for probably thousands of years. There's a reason they exist. Handy little buggers, DPNs. Don't worry about magic loops just yet. DPNs should be in everyone's knitting arsenal.

Then there’s gussets, putting stitches on stitch holders to save for later work, cables and cable needles, and even knitting in the round. I personally never feared knitting in the round. I took the plunge into circular needles and DPNs in order to work in the round. Never purl again!!!! Who wouldn’t get excited about knitting in the round. Okay, there are times when purling has to be done in the round as well but not very often once you get through the ribbing. But let’s face it, for beginners those are all scary terms.

Once we understand each individual technique it loses its stranglehold on our fears. Simply taking each new thing one step at a time really shows how not scary it is. I always recommend to anyone I teach or who asks about learning knitting, buy a cheap, cheap skein of yarn and knit, rip it out, knit, rip it out, knit. How many of us go to the local yarn store and spend $20 on a single skein of glorious yarn that tickles our senses and we go home and we look at that expensive, lovely, special yarn and freeze up because we are afraid of messing up with that awesome, expensive yarn?

Practice on cheap, rough, scruffy, tough, yet smooth yarn. Spend $2-$3 on some yarn at the large chain craft store or department store and mess up as much as you want. It doesn’t matter. Just rip it out again. Be sure to buy a smooth yarn for this foray into throwing caution to the wind. My niece decided to teach herself crocheting and went and bought some boucle yarn. Of course she gave up. Experienced crocheters and knitters pull their hair out when working with boucle. All those little loops and strands get caught and hide your stitches so you can’t even see what you’re doing.

So get out there, armed with your smooth $3 yarn, and make samples of everything you want to do. Make a gusset. Do a short row. Make a cable. Pick up stitches. Lost track of how many rows between cable crossings? Rip it out. Holes showing between short rows because you forgot to wrap the last stitch? Rip it out. This is your classroom. The cost of $3 for yarn that will only be used to make samples is quite a fair price to learn all the techniques that would scare us into immobility with our special $20 yarn. Save that $20/skein yarn for the project that always scared you before you mastered the technique with the fearless cheap yarn practicing.