S3 E9 What Knitting Patterns Can’t Teach You with Patty Lyons

Adam Cleevely (0:00)

One of the things that I'm desperate to ask you is how you feel about modern patterns. Do you think we're creating now a new breed of less capable knitters?

Patty Lyons (0:13)

Yes.

Adam Cleevely (0:14)

Hello and welcome to Yarn Library with me, Adam Cleevely. The podcast where I talk to fascinating people in the fiber world about knitting, creativity, community and the stories behind the stitches.

Pick up your needles, pour a cup of tea, settle in and welcome to the Yarn Library. In this episode of Yarn Library, I'm talking to Patty Lyons. Patty Lyons is one of the world renowned knitting teachers. Someone who I take real inspiration from because she's all about giving knitters confidence and moving forwards and being able to progress with understanding your knitting. I'm kind of talking to her about the very end of the episode about Knitting ER, her new book, which is an amazing book, but we get to cover so many topics before we even go there. And that's what this podcast is about. Anyway, we got so carried away so quickly, I never even recorded the introduction properly. So whilst I'm editing the podcast, and I'm doing my cooking at the same time, I realized that I literally have to record an intro. Anyway, I hope you love listening to Yarn Library. Thank you so much for tuning in. Enjoy this episode with Patty Lyons.

Patty Lyons (1:17)

I'll expand upon that.

Wow, it's such a tricksy topic because there have been a lot of changes in patterns that I 100 percent agree with, even though, to be honest, I hate change, I just hate change. But so I had to take a breath and get out of the, all change is bad.

Adam Cleevely (1:47)

It's very spoon feed, isn't it?

Because now the expectation is that, well, I buy a pattern and it should tell me everything about how to knit that. I mean, short of possibly how I hold the yarn in my hand, that is expected to tell you literally everything.

Patty Lyons (2:04)

I literally saw a pattern.

Adam Cleevely (2:05)

Or for some patterns it is.

Patty Lyons (2:07)

I literally saw a pattern that didn't just say cast on. It said, holding the needle in your right hand, drape the tail over, like describe long tail cast on.

Adam Cleevely (2:18)

Wow. Okay. That's going a long way then.

Patty Lyons (2:20)

Yeah. That is pants of crazy.

So I always say, we've stopped knitting and we've started reading. And there's a lot of drawbacks to that. And it's not just the fact that we don't feel empowered, which is like literally that I remember Franklin Habit asked me, we were stuck on the last image of Patty's Knitting Bag of Tricks. We had the first image. We were stuck on that last image. This was the first book I wrote. And he said, tell me, talk to me about how you want, just give me a couple sentences about how you want the knitter to feel by the end of the book. And I said, oh, I can just say it in one word, empowered. And then he knew exactly what to draw because he's amazing. But not only is that like my soapbox, is I want knitters to feel empowered. But when you spoon feed everything for a pattern, there's no skill transfer.

You know how to make that pattern, which is why I never teach a pattern class. Because I don't want to teach you row by row how to knit my pattern. I want you to have skills and then go forth, knit all the things, go.

Adam Cleevely (3:40)

Interesting. Yeah.

Patty Lyons (3:42)

But yeah, I could literally spend two hours talking about this. And you're like, oh God, please stop.

Adam Cleevely (3:51)

But it's an interesting problem because I think on the one hand, having more spoon feeding for knitters allows more knitters to come in and do more ambitious patterns and have the confidence to go on to do a bigger and potentially more daunting pattern.

But you're right about, I don't worry so much about the impact that that has on the knitter, that there's a negative effect, that they're not learning in the same high quality way. I worry actually about the impact on the barrier to creating designs because as you said, you're now expecting a designer not just to be a designer, but they also have to be a teacher and communicator and all those other things, you know, as well as a writer and those other things.

Patty Lyons (4:36)

Yeah, but that's where my problem with it.

I worry about both things. I worry about what's happened to the industry in general, and I worry about, I mean, we can talk about testers, that's a whole other thing. But I worry that I don't want people to watch and match. So my videos, they always take longer. My book takes longer to read, because you can watch and match a technique, but that doesn't mean you've learned it. So what happens when you're just, when I teach short rows, I'll say, tell me, show of hands how many, because I teach a class that teaches like five short row methods. I'll say, show of hands how many people have done the wrap and turn, and that's the most popular one, so most people raise their hand. And I say, tell me how many people do wrap and turn by doing this.