Developing mastery in any given skill takes time. I've noticed that there is a stage when you cross from complete novice to where you know what you know and you know what you don't know. I find this stage to be the most exciting as you have developed a basic skill set and your direction is clear because you know where to point your efforts next. Your vocabulary now allows you to ask the right questions when you take a class or have access to a master Knitter's assistance. I can't tell you how often when a novice Knitter asks for help I spend more time trying to understand what it is they need than I do on solving the problem. When you get to this stage it's as though all the pieces of the puzzle suddenly make sense and you know you can put it all together.
If you are still at the earlier stage and want to be able take advantage of all possible learning opportunities I would recommend that you work on the knitting lexicon, a good basic book like Vogue Knitting Knitopedia would be a great starting point. You don't have to buy one, libraries have many of these books and simply learning the language of Knitting will have a big impact on your ability to increase your problem solving.
When I worked in my LYS I always noticed that the Knitters who had the most to gain from these references were the most resistant to using them, they just wanted to get on with the knitting because they didn't yet know how much they didn't know.
Ah yes i totally get all of that!
ReplyDeleteReports that say there's -- that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things that we know that we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know.
—Donald Rumsfeld, United States Secretary of Defense