Teaching dd6 to knit

[Jean in Newcastle]

I am starting to teach dd6 to knit using some simple knitting books for kids. But as I started to teach her to cast on, I realized my first road-block - she's left-handed and I'm not! Do I teach her to do it the way I do? Does she do it backward from what I do? Help me please!

[In The Great White North]

Teach her the same way you knit. Which yarn is held by which hand is what differentiates American from European knitting, not right or left handed knitters. Eventually, when she knits with more than one color yarn, she will need both anyway.

[Carol in Cal.]

Knitting requires the use of both hands all the time, so IME everyone does it more or less the same ways.

[Storm Bay]

Teach her the same way you knit. Which yarn is held by which hand is what differentiates American from European knitting, not right or left handed knitters. Eventually, when she knits with more than one color yarn, she will need both anyway.

 

Actually, IMO, it is handed. I can knit both right and left handed the continental (aka European) way. When I knit right handed the knitting is held by my left and is knit onto the right needle; when I knit left handed it's the opposite. The English (aka American) way is too busy for me and I wasn't taught it as a child. What you may wish to do is use a mirror to make it opposite or find a video that teaches it for lefties. In continental knitting the bulk of the work is done by your dominant hand, not the hand that holds the yarn.

[GailV]

I agree with Karin that knitting is "handed". The work of the dominant hand is to put the needle in the correct stitch, which is being held on the needle of the non-dominant hand. How you hold the yarn (continental or not) is a different matter than what the OP is talking about.

 

My older dd has taught herself to knit right-handed AND left-handed. This came about because I never got around to teaching her how to purl, and she was trying to figure out how to come back across the row without flipping over her work. I seem to remember reading on Yarn Harlot's blog that when she was learning to knit that she went back and forth that way, too, and didn't realize that it was "wrong".

 

ANYWAY, having said all of that, you could simply say, "okay, you're going to learn to do this using your right hand to put the right needle in stitch that's on the left needle" and not really make a big deal about whether it's right-handed or left-handed. I imagine the handedness of it all is a bigger deal for adults than kids, unless she's very, very left-handed.