I recently taught a couple of friends to knit! The first friend, I taught on a relaxed Saturday afternoon/evening, and I taught Portuguese style, because this is the style of knitting that I most commonly use. We started off with just knitting up a small cotton stockinette washcloth, with a seed stitch border, to get into practicing a lot of knit and purl stitches, and also a little bit of "reading" the previous rows and dropping down a few stitches to fix a mistake a few rows earlier! It was a mad success, and that friend has now made a few different project and is currently knitting up a scarf in three colours!
“Spending time with friends has never been easier than, “Hey, do you want to hang out and knit?””
The next friend whom I taught to knit was asking me about it just before spent a week together at camp, so along with my own knitting, I packed some spare needles and cotton again, and we were off! Over the week, my friend managed to finish the wash cloth, come up with a design for a thing they wanted, make that, and start on a third project!! In both of these teaching experiences, I also found myself becoming more aware of my own knitting habits, and being able to better articulate why I do things the way that I do, when knitting.
Now I'm not just making knitwear, I'm also making knitting buddies for myself, and I must say, it has been delightful! Spending time with friends has never been easier than, "Hey, do you want to hang out and knit?"
If you haven't made yourself a knitting buddy recently, I highly recommend it! If only because now your yarn shopping can also count as gift shopping!