There's no right way to knit

When I was in high school I was a drama geek.

Not the make a bet with the cool kids that I can turn the dropout stoner into homecoming king kind of drama.

I did REAL drama.

As in theater.

My drama teacher put together a group of his best acting students to do a night of improv.

If you’ve ever watched Whose Line Is It Anyway, it was like that, but not nearly as good.

When you’re doing improv there are two golden words:

Yes, and…

In the middle of a scene you have to work with the other actors to tell a story, so you NEED to go with whatever they say.

Once, we were playing “The Dating Game” where one person is trying to choose who to date, and three “contestants” are trying to win their affection.

In our version the contestants are randomly assigned characters to play. One guy was suffering from narcolepsy, one thought he was auditioning for the musical CATS (and was way too into it), and I…

…was slowly transforming into a chicken.

As the scene played out, the guy auditioning for CATS started giving me a look like he wanted to eat me.

Eventually, he attacked, and I went with it.

So I started running around the theater like a chicken whose head just got bitten off by a crazy cat man.

The crowd was DYING with laughter as I finally fell on the floor slowly kicking my leg, and the cat man won the date.

But the whole thing would never have worked if I was attacked and responded by saying “no, that doesn’t work for me.”

The flow of the scene would have stopped.

Here’s the thing.

We do this in knitting all the time.

Knitting the wrong way

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…

You’re working on a pattern, and you reach a set of instructions that just don’t make sense.

You try and try and try, but for some reason you can’t figure out how to make what the designer says work for you.

Now you’re stuck.

What do you do? Keep struggling until it clicks? Ask someone else to help explain it differently? Abandon the project altogether?!

The designer put “wrap and turn” short rows in the pattern, so you NEED to do those for it to turn out right.

Right?!

If you changed it to a different technique, that wouldn’t work.

Or would it..?

Is it wrong to improvise someone else’s design?

It’s ok to make changes

A while back I was chatting with one of our Yarnist Society members about a project she was stuck on.

She was trying to do a bind off that just wasn’t working for her.

I asked if it was important to the pattern to use that particular technique.

As far as she could tell it wasn’t.

So instead, I suggested an alternative technique that might produce a similar effect.

And you know what?

It worked just fine.

For the most part, it doesn’t matter if you change the cast on, or the short row technique, or you add colorowork, or shorten the sleeves.

You don’t have to do it EXACTLY the way the pattern says.

If you’re comfortable making changes then GO FOR IT.

The only thing that matters is if you like the way it looks in the end.

So the next time you’re wondering if you can knit this in a different way, just remember those golden words…

YES, and…

do what works for you.

Conclusion

I hope this offers you some encouragement, or at the very least some confirmation that you’re doing it right.

There’s no wrong way to knit. There’s only what’s right for you.

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.