Next Steps in Reversible Knitting

Last week I taught 3 classes with the San Diego Knitters Guild. I started with Intro to Fission Knitting and Intro to Fusion Knitting. The next day I taught Next Steps in Reversible Knitting. The last class was designed to cover topics such as: understanding the notation & chart symbols, tricks for reading the chart, fixing mistakes, choosing yarn/colours.  But the class quickly evolved into something I am so excited about & would love to do again. 

My Intro classes focus on learning the rules: that is, the 3 Rules of Fission Knitting or the 4 Rules of Fusion Knitting. Although these reversible techniques work for different reasons, the rules have a lot of similarities. Most of the people taking the Next Steps class took both of the intro classes. This allowed me to efficiently cover the planned topics by contrasting how they differed for each kind of knitting. 

Then I started to talk about my fabrics as a grid of background stitches. The design stitches are a series of slipped stitches that are anchored between background stitches on this grid. I could see the lightbulbs turn on for people in class.  This is how I think of my fabric when I am designing. I also use this concept to quickly read charts, fix mistakes & reorganize after frogging. I have never explained it to anyone in these terms before. I feel that this explanation demystifies my techniques.

Now I am curious. I wonder what a knitter needs to know about my work before I can teach these concepts. If you have knit my cabled patterns before, please leave a note below to let me know if viewing my fabrics as a grid makes sense. Is this is something you already figured out as you knit my designs? Thx. Mary