You Don't Need to Know Everything About Knitting

Apparently there are at least 99 different ways to cast on stitches.

Ninety-nine! (I may be exaggerating!)

I've been knitting since I was a child, I've taught knitting for years, I design, I tech edit patterns, and I can tell you that I don't know 99 ways to cast on. In fact, I don't even know how many I do know, although I'm fairly certain it's nowhere near 99, and I'm not about to sit down and count them.

I have one cast-on that I use most of the time, a few others for particular things, and occasionally I'll come across something in a pattern that I've never done before. When that happens, I look it up, have a go, and decide whether it's something I want to use again. Sometimes I've forgotten how to do it by the next time I need it and have to look it up all over again!

But imagine being a relatively new knitter and discovering that there are 99 ways to do the very first thing you need to do before you can even start knitting. Where on earth do you begin?

We have access to more knitting information than ever before. Books, websites, YouTube videos, Instagram reels, online courses and people demonstrating techniques that you didn't even know existed, most of it available at the touch of a button.

Which is wonderful, of course. I love that I can find an answer to almost anything without leaving the sofa. In fact, I quite often discuss something with my husband in the evening, watch a video about it at 3am when I can't sleep, and then show him how to do it the next day. He thinks I know everything, when actually I've just watched someone else explain it!

But I'm not sure having all that information available is always helping us.

You start looking for a way to cast on a stretchy edge, and before you know it you've watched six tutorials, discovered three methods you've never heard of, and found someone explaining why the method you've used quite happily for the last twenty years is completely wrong. So now, instead of casting on your stitches, you're wondering whether you ought to learn a new technique, and perhaps another one just in case. Or feel completely incapable.

Of course, I'm not suggesting that we should stop learning. That would be a rather strange thing for a knitting teacher to say! But I think there's a difference between learning something because it will help you with your knitting and learning it because you feel you ought to know it.

If you have a cast-on that works beautifully for the things you make, why would you need another ten?

On the other hand, if you're knitting a sock and the cuff isn't stretching enough, perhaps that's the moment to explore a different cast-on. You've got a reason to learn something new, and you're beginning to understand why one method might work better than another.

One of the things I find myself saying when I'm teaching is, "It depends." Which I know isn't always the answer people want when they've come to me because they want someone to tell them what to do!

But sometimes there's a very good reason for using a particular technique, and sometimes there are several perfectly good ways of achieving the same thing. Your hands aren't the same as mine, you might hold your yarn differently, find certain movements uncomfortable, or simply prefer the way one method looks over another.

I'd much rather help someone understand why they're doing something than give them another rule to remember, because once you begin to understand what your stitches are doing, you can start making decisions for yourself.

There's so much emphasis on learning new things in knitting, but I wonder whether we sometimes forget how much there is to discover in the things we already know. You can knit and purl for years without really looking at what those stitches are doing, or follow patterns quite happily without understanding why a particular increase or decrease has been used. And then one day something clicks, and suddenly you can see what's happening.

You haven't necessarily learned another technique. You've understood something you were already doing.

There will always be another technique to learn, another pattern to try, another person doing something differently, and that's one of the lovely things about knitting. We could keep learning for the rest of our lives and still find something new.

But we don't have to learn it all.

So, back to those 99 cast-ons. I don't know them all, and I don't intend to learn them all, but if I ever need number 73, I'll find out how to do it.

And until then, I think I'll just get on with my knitting.

Nessa

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