Cameo

My husband was practicing with his new camera lens the other day and decided to use my knitting as his focal point.  I’m always happy to have him take pictures of knitting, especially if my exhausted face is not the focal point.  This is after an all day event at work, so I am wiped out.

It’s interesting to watch myself knit from photos.  I am a thrower rather than a picker.  I.e. I knit English rather than Continental.  I know this is a less efficient way to knit as your motions are much bigger and therefore slower.  I’m not going to win any speed knitting competitions any time soon and I’m ok with that.

I can knit either way, and when I knit with two colors I hold one color in each hand.  It’s just that I’m more comfortable throwing and it’s a relief whenever I’m done with two color knitting because I can go back to throwing the yarn over.

As I teach the knitting class, I am mostly teaching them to throw the yarn.  However, I have noticed that a couple of kids are more comfortable holding the yarn in their left hand and picking.  It makes me wonder about whether our knitting preference is because we’re taught that way or if there’s a natural inclination.  Both girls that want to pick are right handed, so it’s not an issue of what the dominant hand is.

An interesting side note is that one of our students was knitting backwards last week.  She got to the end of the row and rather than flipping her work around, she just started knitting the row backwards.  It took me awhile to figure out what she was doing (I was watching 5 kids knit all at once), because all of her stitches were sitting on the needle backwards.  While she’s the most proficient knitter I have in the class along with Lily, she’s also the tightest knitter.  I think next week I’m going to cast on with much larger needles and see if she’s ready to start making her square.