Intro. to Knitting
A Sloths Skillshare Collective Workshop Segment
“… circumstances held me to threads and they won me over. I learned to listen to them and to speak their language. I learned the process of handling them.” – Anni Albers in Material as Metaphor
I believe that craft-making and skill-sharing is radical, transformative, and fundamental in pushing back against the downstream thrust of consumerism. This is why I love teaching hand-crafts like knitting and embroidering.
From a very young age, I’d watch my great-grandmother transform great balls of yarn into massive blankets with expert precision and speed. She never used a pattern and she seemed never to look at what she was doing. Yet, her lacework was perfect, her pattern repeats unsoiled by mistakes. As the balls in the basket by her feet shrunk, the fabric in her lap grew. She would get upset when I used the blankets she made because, “I didn’t deserve them,” and, “didn’t know what it took to make them.” When my grandmother would hear this from the next room, she’d say, “Oh Mom, let her use the blankets!”
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I’d feel sheepish sitting there under the cover, guilty but not knowing why. She watched me from the corner of her eye, doing nothing with my hands, and continued knitting in front of the T.V.
I became obsessed with the idea of making something from nothing and eventually learned how to knit. By the time I was 16, I was working in a knitting studio, teaching lessons, and writing patterns. In the 20+ years since, I have taught over 100 knitting workshops. This one was taught through PNCA’s Sloth Skillshare Collective.
Intro to Knitting Workshop
Workshop instruction included the following:
- How to use a swift to wind a skein of yarn into a ball
- How to cast-on, knit, and bind off
- Knitting in the round
- Basic explanation of gauge and pattern writing in order to help individuals write their own, custom cowl pattern
- Fixing mistakes
I created a series of simple how-to videos which played on-screen during the workshop. When I was showing students how to cast on, for example, a video of the same thing played on the screen next to written instructions. This was to ensure the workshop was as accessible as possible given the technology available to us.
I love teaching introductory workshops the most because, inevitably, attendees leave with a skill they feared they might not be able to learn. Students express over and over how they “probably won’t be able to get it,” but then, they do! Skill-sharing provides an opportunity to build community, build confidence, and build solidarity with each other while establishing independence, in small ways, from an exploitative capitalist system.
Interested in Ryan-Ashley facilitating a knitting workshop at your location? Please email to inquire.