Knitting: Week 8 Reflection

What I learned about my new hobby:

I thought knitting would be hard, and it was. But it is not impossible. I don't like doing small things with my hands and I get frustrated really easily with things like this, but after getting started and kept going, I was able to keep going. The receptiveness in stitching makes it become easier to do and I'm finding it is pretty relaxing. I think more people should try it out. 

What I learned about myself as a learner: 

I started off trying to learn from Youtube. I've always labeled myself as a visual learner. I knew that I learned better by seeing someone model something to me. While I still consider myself this type of learner, Youtube isn't the answer for everything! I found a great place with teachers who really helped me get started. I found I learn best when I have someone who is an expert present. My next challenge came when I tried to learn a new stitch, and I tried to resort back to Youtube, but again I was successful when I was able to go back to the experts to help me a long the way. It is still pretty intimidating for me to be around people like this, but with more practice I realize that I can be like them one day. In just 8 weeks, I learned 3 stitches and knitted 2 hats and half a scarf. 

What do I understand about learning theories:

Motivation: The more I learned, the more I wanted to keep learning. As challenging as a lot of my experience was, I wanted to keep going. I've kind of toyed with the idea of knitting before, but I didn't think I would actually want to sit and learn how to knit. Sure I am still motivated by making things for myself and making things for others for Christmas, I am seeing the intrinsic motivation from this process.

Zone of Proximal Development: I had some challenges in this learning experience. I messed up and had to start over many times. But those struggles and frustrations were me learning. I was expanding my skills by getting more complex. I could have just made a scarf from the basic stitch, but in order to stitch the scarf I wanted, I had to get out of my learning comfort zone and do hard things. 

Cognitive Apprenticeship: I had a lot of help in this process: the nice people at Blazing Needles, my friend Allyson, and my grandma. These people show expertise in this skill and they were able to help me along my way. I started basic and I was able to move on to more complex stitches. 

I really enjoyed this learning opportunity. As I am looking back on my experiences, I honestly thought that I chose really impossible goal to knit a scarf. I don't usually enjoy/have patience for doing activities like knitting so, while it interested me, I didn't bother with it. While I had some really stressful and unsuccessful moments in my learning, I find myself confident in my new skill and I look forward to keeping it up and creating more. 

Knitting Week 7

This week I learned how to do the cable stitch. This knitting community I found is kind of funny, they have Thursday knit nights where everyone just gets together, works on projects, and eat treats. This really nice lady showed me some different techniques to add to my knitting. She taught me how to hold my yarn so I can purl easier. She also showed me some tricks to counting stitches with the cable stitch. After a bit of practice, I was able to make it look okay. I need more practice with it, but I started doing that stitch on my scarf, so hopefully the more stitch onto my scarf, it will start looking a little better. I also learned a different way to cast on to start my knitting. The way I learned before was called the long tail cast on which allows the stitches to become stretchy-which worked out great for making a hat. I think the cast on I learned this week is called the knit cast on and it isn't as stretchy as the hat.

Looking at my experiences this week, I thought a lot about the idea of intrinsic motivation. Sure I started knitting so I can make myself some cute things like a scarf, but I think that as I have learned more the intrinsic motivation is more prevalent. Having the challenge of learning new stitches and seeing completed work has definitely motivated me to keep learning and even after this learning blog, I plan on keep on learning new things to knit.