Lessons from knitting

I brought knitting with me yesterday while I was invigilating an exam. It was the Lace Ribbon Scarf (which still doesn't look like a scarf yet). And I was reflecting on some of the difficulties encountered in teaching - or, more properly, in the sort of cat-herding that surrounds teaching.

I was also thinking about knitting being taught in schools. Some of the European schools teach it, and the Waldorf (Rudolf Steiner) schools do. I was re-reading part of Bernadette Murphy's "Zen and the Art of Knitting" over the weekend and she was writing about the Waldorf schools. And while some of the stuff about the philosophy behind it seems a bit precious to me, perhaps (The idea that children must needs work with natural fibers, because otherwise they get "fooled" and "don't know what is real and what is not"), I do think there's some sound lessons craft can teach a person, lessons I probably absorbed as a kid without really realizing it.

(That said, I won't get into the discussion of whether craft "should" or "should not" be taught in the schools. As a college prof, I admit I have much more interest in students coming to me being able to read proficiently and do advanced math without fear and know how to cite sources and write a coherent paper.)

But I do think there's value in learning craft.

By "craft," in my case, I mean sewing, crochet, and knitting (which I learned in that order as a child). Other crafts - woodworking, baking, beadmaking, many things - would probably have similar, if not the very same, lessons.

Lesson 1: Following the directions (most of the time).

One thing I hear other profs complaining about again and again - and I know I've complained about - is that some of the students just can't, or won't, follow directions. I don't know if it's fear or laziness or not being used to it or what. But I can write the steps of a lab exercise - say, preparing a soil for pH analysis - in a numbered list, and there may still be someone who either doesn't seem to know what to do when, or who mixes the steps up. (I am exempting people with real and demonstrated learning disabilities from this group; these are people not known to be dyslexic or dysnumeric or whatever). It seems to me - though I could be wrong - that following instructions is not as emphasized as it once was.

One thing I learned early on - and also learned this from experiments in baking as a child - is that steps are usually given in a certain order for a reason. In some cases, you might be able to do the steps in a different order than written, but then again - if you sew the sleeves of a blouse in too early, either it will fit badly, or you won't be able to successfully close the shoulder seam, or it will be a lot harder, or whatever.

Also, sometimes, it's a good idea to trust the directions even if they don't make sense to you. (This is different from the directions "seeming wrong," which I will address later). The first time I turned a sock heel - probably about 15 years ago now - I read the instructions on the pattern, and even though it was a well-known and well-loved and praised pattern off the Internet (Joan Hamer's two-strand worsted-weight socks, and it's comforting to know that pattern still exists in cyberspace), it didn't make sense to me. But I asked my mom - who had knit socks in the past - and she looked at it, counted a bit, and said, "Trust the pattern."

Once I did it, just following along, it made sense to me. (Now, I pretty much have the standard "turns" that I use for a 64-stitch sockyarn sock memorized).

2. Trust your knowledge. And if something seems wrong, there are often ways you can test it. Does the number of stitches to cast on seem too few - or two many - given the suggested gauge of the sweater? Something might be off. You learn to read your knitting - or you learn things like how the basic shapes of a quilt block will fit together. There are lots of little "check yourself" steps you can look at in things, and once you gain experience, you learn things like "an oven at 425 is going to be way too hot for cookies like those; try 350 instead for the first pan."

I think some of the "young'uns" these days don't learn that - they don't learn the confidence with their tasks, or the familiarity, or the ability to go,"Wait, there's a typo here, I know it."

It's like Elizabeth Zimmerman said about knitting: don't be a "blind follower." If something seems wrong, there's a chance it is. Or sometimes, you can figure out a more efficient way of doing something. (Like on the Honeycomb vest I knit; I figured out that at least one of the cable-crosses could be done as a sort of twisted-stitch instead, which was faster). Or you learn what substitutes work in cooking, so you can substitute if you're out of something and don't want to run to the grocery, or if you're cooking for someone with a dietary concern, or you just want to play around and invent.

I often stop and tell my students "checkpoints" they can use on calculations. For a very simple example: you are calculating relative dominance for the tree species in a forest. "Relative" means "What proportion of the total does each species take up," therefore, all the relative dominances together should sum to 100 - or dang close to it. I'm surprised at the number of people who either DON'T do the checkpoint or who do it, find their calculations are incorrect, and just give up.

It's like counting stitches in knitting or crochet. Or like doing that sample block first for quilting. Or, if you're sewing a garment out of very expensive or precious material, making a muslin first of a new pattern to be sure it fits and you can make it go together right.

Or, I suppose, it's like music: learning to improvise (which I am just barely doing) once you know some of the basic rules.

I suspect learning the "basic rules" of how something works are a big part of being able to trust yourself - and being able to do, for lack of a better term, "cross-platform" uses - for example, seeing that a statistical test you learned for one situation also applies to a rather different one.

And I wonder if some folks don't bother to acquaint themselves with the basic rules - or if they're so used to "cookbooking" it that they don't internalize the rules, or what.

I find now that I've gained more familiarity with chords on the piano, I can kind of mess around and find chord progressions that sound good. Or that surprise me. (My teacher had me working out chords for the praise song "Like the Deer" and I realized that it was only one or two chords off from the chord progression of Pachelbel's Canon in D).

And there's a certain joy in that discovery - in the fun of messing around and in the surprise of "Wait, wait, I know that tune."

(Also, playing around just with a progression down from, I think it was A major? I wound up playing a bit of the chord progression to "O Sanctissima")

And I think people who don't learn the rules to the point where they can maybe begin mixing the rules up a little - or begin departing from them - they don't get that joy of discovery.

3. Be patient. Learning stuff takes time. One thing I've really had brought home to me with the piano lessons is how much time it takes to get good. But, if you work at it, you do eventually get good. I can do things now on the piano I never thought I'd be able to do.

I think a lot of "young'uns" either don't have patience, or haven't learned it yet. Knitting, quilting, sewing, crochet - they all take patience. Different levels, perhaps: it can take a year or more to knit a sweater (especially if you're a busy person). You might be able to make a blouse in a couple of days if it's a simple pattern that you already know well, and if you don't have much else to do. But it all takes time. And also, learning a skill - it takes patience, because your early efforts typically are not that good. (I tend to forget that, because I've been sewing/knitting/crocheting for so long).

4. Concentration. You learn that some tasks require full attention, and others you can do while distracted. I think this is something some people don't learn. (I know when I was a kid, studying in front of the television was forbidden, and I also learned that if I was studying with the radio on, it could not be to music that had words, or I'd listen to the words and not pay attention to what I was studying). With craft, it's the same: if I'm knitting complex lace from a chart, or doing shaping of a sweater where I have to do the dreaded "Left side: work as for right, reversing shaping" where you have to think of everything the opposite way, I can't be watching television or talking to someone. But knitting on a plain sock, or doing a simple pattern - I can knit and read (if I don't have to look at my hands too much) or knit and invigilate an exam, or knit and talk to someone.

5. It's good sometimes to be still and be quiet. I wonder if we're losing that as a society. When I go out across campus - either to walk to a meeting or to take something that needs to be dropped off at an office - I'm relieved, because that's five or ten minutes I can be alone with my thoughts. But I see so many people who have to be plugged in some way or another. (Or at the grocery store. I get frustrated at the cell-phone talkers at the grocery store, because they often don't pay attention to where they're walking; I've nearly been bumped into a few times). One thing I think the pursuit of some kind of a craft does for a person is that it does seem to build that appreciation of solitude (Though I could be wrong on that; it could be the other way 'round - that people who like stillness and quiet tend to pick up hobbies that allow it). The focus required by handquilting - or doing elaborate lace - or embroidering sort of allows a space to open up in your mind. Sometimes I've solved problems I was mulling over, or had insights into stuff, when my hands were occupied with some kind of handwork. (For me, it's kind of like driving out on country roads - I think I have an excess of mental attention, or something, and I need something to occupy the "worry centers" so I can really think.) But listening to music or watching tv or talking banalities on the phone doesn't allow for that same kind of reflection.