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12:13pm January 25, 2014
Trying to learn to purl.  Chaos is ensuing between these needles, you don’t even want to know how my fabric looks as a whole. However.  Muscle memory is amazing.  Years and years ago I learned to knit, and I was really no good at it.  It was very hard, every stitch was difficult, and I screwed up so many times that I basically tied my yarn into knots that couldn’t be dealt with, more often than I did anything useful with it. Leave it alone for a few years and the knit stitch is so easy I don’t even have to think about it. That’s generally how this kind of skills work for me: 1.  Learn skill, do really badly at it, but practice, and stay bad at it, and make no progress. 2.  Get frustrated and stop. 3.  Wait anywhere from 2-15 years. 4.  Come back to it. 5.  Be really good at it, or else really good compared to before. (I’m pretty sure things like this are where a lot of ‘savant skills out of nowhere’ come from, and I understand why a lot of research is showing that autistic learning styles can be understood by looking at savant learning styles, even in non-savant autistic people.  It’s basically the same thing, it’s just a matter of degree.)

Trying to learn to purl.  Chaos is ensuing between these needles, you don’t even want to know how my fabric looks as a whole.

However.  Muscle memory is amazing.  Years and years ago I learned to knit, and I was really no good at it.  It was very hard, every stitch was difficult, and I screwed up so many times that I basically tied my yarn into knots that couldn’t be dealt with, more often than I did anything useful with it.

Leave it alone for a few years and the knit stitch is so easy I don’t even have to think about it.

That’s generally how this kind of skills work for me:

1.  Learn skill, do really badly at it, but practice, and stay bad at it, and make no progress.

2.  Get frustrated and stop.

3.  Wait anywhere from 2-15 years.

4.  Come back to it.

5.  Be really good at it, or else really good compared to before.

(I’m pretty sure things like this are where a lot of ‘savant skills out of nowhere’ come from, and I understand why a lot of research is showing that autistic learning styles can be understood by looking at savant learning styles, even in non-savant autistic people.  It’s basically the same thing, it’s just a matter of degree.)