Knitting- Week 6

I finished my new hat! I feel so much more comfortable purling. I am also able to finish a hat off easier than I did before. When you finish a hat you have to decrease the stitches and it can get a bit confusing. You have to move the stitches to different needles because it is difficult to stitch with just 2 needles with fewer stitches. When I made my first hat, I had the help from the instructors at Blazing Needles right there to show me what to do. I didn't get a chance to go back to finish this hat, but I was able to figure it out myself. It is a bit sloppy, but hopefully with more practice later, I can refine my work. This week, I will be attending a class to learn how to cable stitch so I can officially (finally) start my scarf.

It's exciting to see progress in my skills and ability. Just 6 weeks ago, knitting was a pretty foreign idea and now I can make a hat --twice! I was thinking about the readings from this week and cognitive apprenticeship. I've relied pretty heavily on others to help me learn how to knit from the teachers from Blazing Needles, my friend Allyson, Youtube, and my grandma. When I've made mistakes or if I wanted to learn something different at times where one was not available to help me out, I would rely on another resource. While I have a long way from mastery, I think I was able to learn more from all these different resources. I learned in person from the teachers and my friend, so far I've learned what not to do from watching Youtube, and I've had my grandma talk me through a few steps on the phone. As I continue to learn and use my resources, I hope to see more mastery in my skills and I hope to be able to help others learn too.

This week I will learn the new stitch and start my scarf!

Knitting-Week 5

I didn't have a lot of time to work on my knitting this week, but I attended a class Saturday to start my scarf. This week was more successful than last, since I was able to see my mistake and start over from last week. I really want to learn how to knit the cable stitch for my scarf, but I learned in order to do that I need to perfect my purling. So, the kind people in my class got me started on a new hat. (Between my hats and scarf, I'm going to have a warm winter!) The rim of the hat will be purled and then I will use th basic stitch to finish it. I feel confident in my basic stitch so I think after I get the rim done, the rest of the hat will go smoothly.

As I have perfected my basic stitch, I felt very comfortable as I was repeating my stitches. I thought for sure that I could learn the new stitches just as easily and I would have to do another project beside my scarf because I thought I would finish it quickly. From my frustration last week, I've learned that because I was comfortable just doing what I knew I wasn't stretching my thinking and my learning. As I made my mistakes and learned how to correct them, I am finding that I am expanding my zone of proximal development and this is where the learning is happening. As I struggle with this new hat I need to make in order to be better at purling, I am learning. I see this a lot with the students I teach where in order for them to learn, they need to step out of their comfort level of learning and thinking and sometimes they need to make mistakes. I understand this theory in learning, but I sometimes have a difficult time relating things to my own life experiences, so it has been interesting for me to see this happening in my own learning. 

This week, I will finish my hat and hopefully start learning the cable stitch.

Knitting-Week 4

This week I bought new yarn to start my scarf. I practiced the purl stitch more. To make a purl stitch, you need to turn your yarn to the front and then knit-kind of like making a backward basic stitch. 

All in all, this week was a bit frustrating. I've tried the different stitches and I am mostly understanding-when I have someone who knows what to do near me. I tried to start the scarf at home and I would get going on one line and then I would make a mistake that would cause me to have to start all over again. I don't usually enjoy doing little things with my hands so I would get really tired of trying and starting over again so I got very frustrated. I went to my friend's house and she quickly showed me my mistake in starting and now I'm able to keep working. That really annoyed me that she could quickly fix my mistake without really thinking about it. I was missing a certain step and so I felt pretty dumb. As I have reflected on the experience and studied the chapter from our book about expertise, I realized that my brain hasn't been "wired" yet.  I haven't had the experiences the experts have had yet to fix my mistakes and to enhance in my learning of knitting. I still have the same ability to learn as the experts have, I just need to keep trying and keep making mistakes in order to learn. I also need to buy better yarn :) 

So, even though it is frustrating me very much, I know I need to keep it up and keep trying. This week, I am going to keep practicing purl and start my scarf. Hopefully this week will go better!

Knitting Week 3

I finished my hat using the basic stitch!

I learned how to do the purl stitch this week and it worked out pretty well. I tried Youtube again, and while it didn't turn out as bad as my first experience, I still was having a difficult time understanding. I met with a friend of mine who is an amazing knitter this week and she helped me out so much.

As I finished my hat and as I am knitting more, I am experiencing some flow in my project. I usually get really frustrated and fumble with my work when it comes projects like this that require a lot of extra attention working with small things, so it has been a bit surprising to me that I can work on this without really thinking about it. Through all the repetition of the stitches, it tends to get a bit tedious but after a while I am in the flow of it and I end up making really good progress on my project.

This week, I am going to practice more with the purl stitch and combining it with the basic stitch. I will go back to Blazing Needles tomorrow and get some help in making another hat-this time with a brim that has both the stitches. I'm excited to keep learning these new stitches so I can start designing a scarf for the winter!

Knitting Week 2

After my non-successful attempts at learning to knit from YouTube, I attended a beginning knitting class. There were was a big group of people attending the class so I was a bit self conscious about staying and learning. The person teaching was very kind and patient and it turned out to be a success. The first project they teach to learn the basic stitch is a beanie hat. It took me about 2 hours to get just a few rows done at class, but I'm glad I stuck it out!

I took my project home and I have been working on my hat during down time. I think I'm doing pretty good. I have created some knitting schema which is kind of exciting for me. I will work on my hat for a little bit and then put it aside, but I can pick it up and start where I left off without much thought.
Here's my hat so far:

I just need to learn how to finish the hat off now.

This week, I am going to visit a friend of mine who knows how to knit really well and she's goin to teach me another stitch: the purl stitch. I will go back to Blazing Needles to learn the next project. I'm excited that I'm seeing some success in my goal!