5 Great Reasons to Hire a Knitting Instructor
A good knitting instructor is a fantastic resource for a fiber arts community! Have you seen a sign for a class on a local bulletin board? Heard of learning opportunities at your local library? Maybe you picked up an instructor’s business card at your local yarn shop. Or maybe you are lucky enough to personally know several people who are qualified to teach you all about knitting, but you just haven’t taken that step yet. Let me share 5 great reasons to hire a knitting instructor:
1. You want to learn the right way to knit
Take it from someone who is self-taught: It’s very easy to make a simple mistake when you’re learning from a book or the internet, and for that mistake to become a hard-to-break habit. When I first taught myself to knit, I was inadvertently twisting my knit stitches. I didn’t discover it was wrong until I added circular knitting to flat knitting and realized that something didn’t look right. By this time, I was pretty speedy and efficient with my incorrect knitting. It was a job to unlearn the wrong way and to rebuild the correct muscle memory.
A knitting instructor helps you learn the right way from the very beginning, saving you time and frustration.
2. You are Struggling with or intimidated by a new Technique
Some techniques seem to come with a whole lot of baggage. Just say “steek” or “afterthought heel” to some knitters and watch the hives come. Some knitters struggle with one particular concept and some have collected a list of techniques that seem to get the better of them whenever they come up.
I had a student who limited herself to knitting flat things because she couldn’t seem to make knitting-in-the-round work for her. There’s no need for any technique to be a stumbling block or disqualifier to making something you find beautiful! Set up one or more lessons with a good knitting instructor to master and build confidence in those trouble areas.
3. You Are Fighting With a Pattern
Pattern designers and editors are human and make mistakes. Patterns are published in different languages and regional dialects and translated with varying degrees of success. Sometimes patterns are just poorly written!
Maybe you’ve picked up an old project that’s been in time-out for several years and you can’t quite figure out where you were in the pattern.
A good knitting instructor can help you not only with your knitting, but with decoding and understanding your knitting patterns. Excellent knitting instructors can riff off of badly written patterns by seeing what the designer meant to do, and then help you understand how to go on from there.
I remember one student who was knitting a cardigan for her granddaughter. The photo of the finished garment was stunning, but the pattern was clumsily written, and English was not this student’s native language. We met weekly to decipher the next set of instructions, rewrite them in simpler terms, and check to make sure she was confident in the previous week’s work. It was an intensely satisfying project for both of us!
4. You want to learn something New and Expand your Skills
There is always something new to learn!
On a recent tour of several local yarn shops, I had the best time seeing what kinds of classes were being offered. Most shops go beyond the “Knitting 101” classes and have other offerings that can inform you of the special interests of some of your local instructors.
Even with full class schedules, the best knitting instructors will have more information and skills to share than they can possibly cram into classes, and they’d be thrilled to help you expand beyond your current skill set.
One of my students was a fabulous example of someone who was always looking to learn more. She booked a lesson with me and asked me to teach her as many cast-ons and bind-offs that were beyond the basics that we could fit into the time allotment. It was a fantastic lesson! We covered a bunch, and the occasions for when she might use each one. She was already an accomplished knitter, but she wanted to be even better. She knew a knitting instructor could help her get there.
5. You want to Make the Leap from “Homemade” to “Hand Crafted”
You know the difference when you see it. One piece is a little rougher, a little uneven, has a few places where your eye immediately lands on small flaws. The other is clean, smooth, and the words “professional” and “craftsmanship” come to mind.
We know that a large part of what makes the difference between the two includes practice, quality materials, and excellent design. But we also know that some makers do their craft really, really well. They are masters at it, whether they are certified as such or not.
A good knitting instructor can analyze and assess your knitting and give you tips on how to improve. They can diagnose any systemic problems (your purl tension is tighter than your knit tension, for example) or help you clean up small techniques (maybe you’d have better results with a different kind of decrease in this garment).
I had one student who knit flawlessly but was dissatisfied with how her sweaters always ended up. We looked over several and decided to focus on the kind of seaming she was doing to finish her garments. That small change made an enormous difference in the look of her pieces and in how she felt about wearing them in professional settings.
Ready to be a better knitter? find a Knitting instructor today!
Here are 3 suggestions for finding someone who is qualified to help you take your next steps:
- Ask at your local yarn shop if they have an instructor on staff or connections to trusted instructors. Chances are excellent that you can find help there.
- Ask at your local public library if they’re aware of any educators in the community who specialize in knitting, or have references for people who can find them. Never underestimate the power of a librarian!
- Contact an online instructor who offers coaching services and see if they’re willing to meet virtually. You should be able to talk to your prospective instructor before paying for a lesson to be sure you’re a good fit and that they can help you. I offer a free 30-minute Discovery Call for just this sort of thing!
