To Learn – Teach
Since I help coordinate two of the men’s knitting retreats, I often volunteer to teach workshops. One of the easiest ways to learn something is to teach.
Something New To Learn – Teach
And often, when I volunteer to lead a workshop or an “expert table,” I’m woefully ignorant of the topic.
Putting together all the materials for a workshop requires me to know the subject inside-out. Creating samples, written instructions, pictorial tutorials and/or videos necessitates that I am very clear about what I’m teaching. Also, doing all the research necessary to create teaching materials lets me know about other aspects of a specific skill I want to teach.
The Men’s Spring Fiber Retreat this coming May has gotten a lot of support from Urth Yarns via The Perfect Purl on-line web store. Urth Yarns has a great little crochet keychain pattern that each of the guys will get in their registration materials when they arrive. So I thought it might be useful to have a little “pop-up workshop” on crochet basics and specifically how to make this keychain.
So, I’ve decided I should probably make sure I could make one myself. I made two. I also saw a short crochet tutorial on making a heart. It seemed to be a great way to learn a few different crochet stitches for a newbie. So I made one of those as well.
For such a simple looking item, the keychain taught me a lot of new crochet skills. I love when teaching something demands of me that I learn something first.
Now we’ll see if I can convey this knowledge to others!
Current Knitting
The sleeves are moving along on the Bulky Mulespun Cardigan.
I’m almost to the top of the sleeve and the shaping part. Some of the preliminary numbers in my last post were just guesses until I measured an existing/similar sweater that kind of fits.
Whenever someone I love asks me to knit them a sweater, I tell them they need to do a bit of work. I tell them to lay out a similar sweater they own in a “T” shape and and take five measurements:
- Cuff to cuff
- Width of bottom hem
- Width of neck opening at the top
- Height in the center of the sweater from top of neck to bottom of hem
- Height of sleeve hole at the shoulder to the pit
From these measurements, I can design a pretty well-fitting sweater for most people.
Great advice and great looking striped cardigan! See you at the retreat to learn more. Cheers!
Thanks Tom…I can’t tell you how many times I’ve volunteered to lead a workshop at the retreats that required that I learn a lot about the topic and create examples and handouts for it. Very much looking forward to meeting you in a few short weeks!