Understand Your Zero
Learning new things is humbling. It requires that we say (to ourselves or others), “I don’t know.” And that is hard for many of us. Or we find ourselves taking classes to learn things we already know in some kind of self-validation.
Today in knitting class, I caused much consternation for my teacher. I just wasn’t getting it. I felt like I had been transported back to that weaving class I absolutely floundered in last year. It didn’t help that both classes met in the same room, no doubt triggering flashbacks of a language and math that wasn’t explained to someone outside of that world.
We were knitting a heel flap this week and in the three hours of the class, were supposed to finish the heel flap and the gusset. I did not finish, even though the teacher stayed an extra hour with us to help. Feliks didn’t go to class–he wasn’t feeling well–and I realized how much I count on him to temper my frustration or anxiety when feeling completely inept. I also realize now that I should have asked to see a finished heel flap and gusset to really understand what they are and what they do.
These are tiny, slippery little eels of #2 circular needles. My hands feel (and are) huge trying to navigate them. I don’t hold my hands in a way that makes any of this easy–I’m working on that. The yarn is also tiny and the type I chose evidently likes splitting as if splitting were an Olympic sport and they are after the gold.
It is so easy, and I have learned this so many times in my own teaching, to overestimate where “zero” is for students. We make assumptions about what people MUST know. After all, it is so elementary. In my weaving class, there was no recognition of “zero” and no real explanation of things like the parts of the loom. I felt that entire time like I had lost brain function or was in a class being taught in a foreign language. People applauded when I actually created a sampler because it was all so painful and completely bewildering.
You know you’re in trouble when you feel compelled to tell your teacher that actually you are quite smart, you write books, you win awards. That’s how dumb I feel in class sometimes, as if I need to justify that just in this case, my brain fell out of my body.
Perhaps I have a hard time with visualizing things. Or–here’s it–I have a need to visualize them. I think that is actually the key. I need to understand and truly see the architecture of the stitches in order to create them and fix them when I drop a stitch or if I pull the needle out and the entire piece falls off. I can’t yet trust my intuition because there is no understanding or “seeing” behind it.
I love learning, and Feliks and I love our knitting teacher, Miss Roberta. She has been knitting for 70 years and is an excellent teacher. She puzzled through many of my unintelligible mistakes this week with humor and grace (and, yes, some sighing). There is a part of me that wants to practice for 10 years and then send her a pair of beautifully knit socks I made, but that’s the ego part. Will I have a sock (ONE) at the end of this class? We shall see. But I’ve learned a lot. And that is why I go.
