August Reboot Series - Problem Solving in Knitting Patterns

This month I'm going to be doing some re-posting of older blog posts. Some like this one will have updates included as when I reread I often realize I've learned something new since the original post went up.  I hope to have all new interviews every Friday but many Pros take the month of August off and in past years I haven't always been able to get enough interviews back to fill all the August dates.  (As predicted I sent out a much higher number than usual of interview invitations but I don't yet have a new one to post.) 

Don't name the problem!

I know it sounds counter intuitive, but really, don't label a problem that you are trying to solve.

I spent a lot of time helping knitters with problems when knitting from patterns when I worked in my LYS. I quickly learned not to listen to them when they told me what the problem was. Whenever I did it slowed down the process of resolution because often they were wrong! That's why they couldn't figure it out for themselves. Naming the problem stopped them from looking at other details, and that was often where the error in the work was. I had a number of situations where the knitter said the problem was in a specific section of the instructions. Often when I went back to the beginning of the pattern and checked the work I found the error earlier on. By naming the problem the knitter stopped looking in the right place so they were completely unable to determine what was really going wrong. BTW, these were accomplished, smart knitters that just focused on the wrong thing for too long and that is why they needed assistance.