Sunday 24 February 2019

Japanese knitting - His work is incredibly neat

and extraordinarily even.
We taught S.... to knit last year. He came along to the knitting group at the library and said he wanted to learn. 
He didn't have needles or yarn so I gave him a crochet hook and a length of yarn and G.... showed him how to make a chain. S.... spent the rest of that time crocheting a chain and then pulling it undone and doing it again. We told him to come back with needles and yarn if he wanted to learn.
Would he come back? We weren't sure why he was there. There has never been another male in that group. He is Japanese. We sensed he was lonely and wanted companionship if not actual friendship.
But yes, he came back.
The second time I showed him how to cast on and do the knit stitch. What did he want to make? A scarf? I thought he might give up part way through that. No. He returned the next time with most of one big ball knitted. I showed him how to join the next ball. He finished the scarf.
G.... taught him the purl stitch. He made another scarf - stocking stitch with neat garter stitch borders. 
And his work was neat, neat, and neat. His stitches are even. He dropped a stitch. I showed him how to pick it up. He knits with rhythm. His tension is even. 
The third thing he made was a cowl, still in plain knitting. I wondered when he was going to ask to learn something a little more complicated. 
We wanted him to come along last weekend for the family day at the library but nobody knew how to get in touch with him. Would he come yesterday? I thought he wasn't going to be there. He is usually there early. No S.... He heard about the day and is hurt we didn't include him I thought.
No. He arrived late. We greeted him with relief, told him we need his email address so he is on the list. I told him why. He looked a little puzzled at first and then laughed as he does when he feels a little embarrassed. He gave me his email address. 
Then he pulled out his new project. He had designed it himself. It is another scarf but it is patterned.  He showed me a mistake four rows down. He wasn't sure how to fix it. We did it the easy way with him taking the stitches off the needle, undoing it to the mistake and then picking the stitches up again while I stood there and watched and told him how to do it.
He could not have left the mistake there. He's a perfectionist. He reminds me of someone else I know. Her work is beautiful too. She plans, weighs, measures and blocks in a way that no other knitter I know does. Nothing gets wasted. She can make something out of the most disparate scraps of yarn - and make it look as if the whole thing has been planned, that it was intended to be that way. S... really needs to meet her so he can see how he can do even more and still retain his desire to knit something as perfectly as possible.
Yesterday I also started someone else on her first pair of socks. She was, rightly for her, more concerned about understanding what she was doing than perfection but I could see S... was puzzled by this.
Should he wish to knit socks his will be the perfect pair. 
We are lucky to have him in the group. He's setting a good example.

No comments: