Day 2 of Continuing Education

Yesterday I finished up with the Fashion Design class. Several of the students had their garter stitch rectangles ready for the decreases to create the little flap with a buttonhole.

Melanie (foreground) got hers done and began another project. She loves knitting! The student in the background missed Friday's class but already knew how to knit so jumped right in with the project.

This student also missed Friday's class but quickly got caught up. She cast on left-handed but knit right-handed. Another student was left-handed but got the hang of things in fairly short order. I even started knitting left-handed to show her what to do - it certainly gave me an understanding of how she must be feeling learning a new skill as a southpaw.

Keeron (in the 'GIFTED' toque) spent most of his time knitting standing up and wandering around chatting with various people whilst still knitting. I caught him here in a rare moment when he was somewhat seated with the other two gentlemen in the background. He was really good at maintaining the correct number of stitches in each row. The fourth guy had finished his project and had turned it in so he had wandered off to another classroom across the hall.

Here are 7 that were turned in by the end of the class. Pretty nifty, eh? The other students can finish theirs for marks by the end of this week. Melanie added a braided cord to hers so it could go over her shoulder.

I plan to drop in after the holidays and see how many of them have continued with knitting. I'm pretty sure it will have 'stuck' with at least a couple of them.

It was important to me that the students use wool, not acrylic yarn or a blend. Patons Classic Wool is affordable (especially with Michaels coupons) and we got 4 25g balls from each skein. We probably could have made the balls only 20g. Acrylic yarn has its place (things that will be machine washed and dried) but there's nothing like using real wool. And as soon as students can get bamboo needles to use, the better. The plastic needles were a real pain in the butt.

It was a great team effort.Teaching is so satisfying when one is successful at developing a good lesson and materials that make the students' learning very seamless.

I've still got it... (wink).