I used to watch fascinated as my Grandmother knitted in her armchair, and must have been about 7 when I asked her to teach me how to knit. With the occasional input from my Mother, she willingly tried to teach me the age-old craft that she felt every young girl should know. It wasn’t long before major problems surfaced! Not with my aptitude or keenness to learn you understand. No, the problem was my left-handedness - or cack-handedness as my Mother always called it.
However hard they tried neither woman could teach me to knit left-handedly. They couldn’t work out how I should hold the needles or which way to wind the yarn around. It was probably quite amusing to watch but I became very frustrated at the lack of teaching going on! Eventually I decided that in order to learn something that I really wanted to do, I would have to learn it their way. And so I held the needles as they did and learned to knit exactly as they did. In no time at all I was knitting and purling happily.
However hard they tried neither woman could teach me to knit left-handedly. They couldn’t work out how I should hold the needles or which way to wind the yarn around. It was probably quite amusing to watch but I became very frustrated at the lack of teaching going on! Eventually I decided that in order to learn something that I really wanted to do, I would have to learn it their way. And so I held the needles as they did and learned to knit exactly as they did. In no time at all I was knitting and purling happily.
Next came my desire to learn to crochet, but neither my Grandmother nor Mother could face teaching me. I had to wait for my Great Aunt Hilda to pay us a visit from London. Although she had been primed in advance about my left-handedness, she was totally unable to show me how to crochet with the hook in my left hand. Having already learned that compromise was required on my part to learn new things I watched and learned how to crochet ‘her way’.
I remember being told that in my Grandfather’s day it was not permitted to be left-handed and he was forced to sit on his left hand at school. Although we are not so strict these days, the majority of people are right-handed and it’s still difficult to find teaching materials or tools specifically for people like me, although the Internet is a valuable new tool for left-handers. Over the years right-handed tasks have become easier for me and I could probably call myself ambidextrous in some things, but I doubt that even I could teach someone left-handed knitting or crochet if I were asked! This raises some questions for me; are left-handed people more easily able to adapt to this right-handed world than right-handed people are to a left-handed world? Or do we left-handers all give in and use our right hands?
Scientists know that the brains in left-handed and right-handed people are different. Perhaps there was a genuine scientific explanation for my female relatives' difficulties teaching me simple knitting and crochet.
