Being a South Paw (lefty) has it's good points and bad points. On the positive, we're one step closer to First Base. I can do many things with both hands because I had no choice but to learn. I've had LOTS of practice reversing directions, which has made me a better teacher because I've learned to break down actions to their individual motions. I get to tell my husband that I'm in my right mind and he isn't. It doesn't win arguments, but it makes me feel better. There's also these cool left-handed mugs that spill when you drink them with your right hand ....

On the negative, everything is backwards for us. Did you know that scissors are made so that the blades press together when one cuts? When held in the left hand, however, the motion pushes the blades away from each other. Also, have you ever watched a lefty write? Our hand is either underneath, curled over, or smeared with the ink. I had special fast-drying pens when I was a child which would hopefully be dry before my hand ran over what I wrote.

This extends to knitting charts too. Convention puts the first stitch in the lower right hand corner, and works the first row from right to left. The written instructions mirror that. But south paws knit from left to right. Let's take a simple example :

Pattern over multiples of 4 stitches: Row 1 : yo, ssk, k2 Row 2 and all even rows : p4 Row 3 : k1, yo, ssk, k1 Row 5 : k2, yo, ssk Row 7 : ssk, k2, yo   k = knit p = purl yo = yarn over ssk = slip knitwise, slip knitwise,             knit stitches together

The intention of this pattern is to have diagonal rows running from the lower right to the upper left, with a neat line formed by the decreases. However, when a lefty follows the written instructions, the rows will go the opposite direction :

It gets even more confusing when you look at the chart. If I read the chart the way I knit, from left to right, the text directions don't match what I'm doing so I can't refer back to the directions. What's worse, the slip-slip-knit happens before the yarn over. The end result is this :

The diagonals are going the right direction, but notice the lineup of the decreases. In the first swatch, the decreases form a neat line, but in this one not so much. In order for the lace to line up exactly the same, the slip-slip-knits also need to be reversed to knit-two-together. Then your knitting will exactly match. The same holds for make-lefts and make-rights, as well.

If you don't know either of these are going to happen, it can throw you off when your work doesn't match the picture, or when you try to translate between the text and the chart.

But once you know, is it really a problem? Sometimes. If you are knitting letters or an image that doesn't look right reversed, definitely. If the project is a shirt that sits on one shoulder, maybe. It's something to think about before starting to knit.

So what are the options here?

• If reversing doesn't matter, read the chart from the right to left and compare your knitting from left to right.
• If reversing matters, read the chart from left to right, reverse your increases and decreases, and understand that the text isn't going to match. You may want to rewrite the instructions in advance, so that you have text you can follow.
• Or, you can learn to knit right handed .... NOT.

Being left handed in a right handed world, I find reading things backwards to be second nature by now, so I usually opt to read the chart as intended. Occasionally I choose to read the chart from left to right, reversing stitches on the fly. I use the slant of the symbol to determine which way I need to slant, and ignore the legend and text. It takes discipline, though, and I can't really put it down for long periods of time or I'll get totally lost.

Do you have a different way of coping? Let me know.