HELP! Any left handed knitters who can help a student?

Help! We have a fiber arts class where students learn to knit. I have a left handed student who is super frustrated and getting little or no support from her right handed teacher. She is completely lost. Would anyone be interested in giving her a Zoom tutorial? She is a sweet, hard working person and it is hard to see her struggle like this.

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I am of no help, but I wanted to bump this to keep it in sight for someone who can… good luck!

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Thank you!!!

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I’m a left-handed person who knits, but I’m not sure if what I do qualifies as lefthanded knitting. My stitches are on my left needle and I move them to the right needle. I hold the yarn in my right hand but I make most movements with my left hand.

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Would continental style knitting work, I seem to remember this being a conversation??

@AIMR you know a lot about alternate knitting styles (at least in my mind, you do). Any thoughts?

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I would take anything at this point because her art teacher doesn’t know how to knit left handed in order to teach her and has basically told the kid to just figure it out. :rage::triumph:

Wouldn’t it work to sit facing each other & mirror the moves? I don’t knit but could see that working for crochet.

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I am not trying to be mean, but this teacher is not a creative problem solver. I will suggest this strategy. It is likely that they haven’t tried this yet.

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That is sad, a non-creative crafter. Like those awful sales people at the yarn store that are snooty about crochet. No imagination.

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My teacher handed me a mirror and said “good luck!”. Unfortunately there’s still some prejedice against left-handed people. I did manage to learn eventually but it was unnecissarily hard.

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I’m not left handed, but I have a beginner knitting booklet which has sections for left handed people. I would be happy to scan those pages and email to you. It has sketches showing the needles and yarn placement.

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Not as good as one on one instruction but have you checked YouTube? In the past I’ve had a lot of luck finding videos on specific knitting and crochet techniques, I’m sure there must be some on left handed knitting.

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I have also used youtube videos. If you find one that you like you could always mirror/flip the video and you get a left hand version.

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That’s a great idea.

This is the best YouTube I have looked at for left handers…however, I would skip over the first part because she teaches the “throw method”, which is also called English knitting. It is slower and takes more hand motions than the “pick method”, which is also called Continental knitting. This is how I knit now, but unlearning the throw method took me a while! She might as well learn the fast method from the beginning.

Left handed knitting

I actually can knit with either hand. I eat left, bowl left, play golf left but write with my right hand (well, most of the time…)…however, I can’t crochet left to save my life! I don’t really think about it…I just use whatever hand happens to be available, but I am told that I am left dominant and it is my strongest side physically as well.

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