Teaching Knitting

On Tuesday evening, I will meet with 14 people interested in learning to knit for our first class. Although I asked to limit the class to 10 people, somehow 14 are signed up so I'm sure the first class will be chaos -- hopefully they are 14 patient learners! Two are males -- my first male knitting students outside of teaching my sons to knit in the 5th grade.

I've actually put together a syllabus (go ahead and laugh!). I'll concentrate on casting on and the knit stitch the first night. We'll expand to the purl stitch and fixing common mistakes in the second class. Then we'll talk about scheduling a field trip to our local LYS, to talk about possible projects. In the third week we'll do increase and decrease and binding off. And week four we'll keep knitting and solving problems, but will also talk about color, fiber, spinning, Ravelry, Etsy, Fiber College, blogs, podcasts, newsletters, free pattern sites, books, knitting groups and other knitting community topics.

As lovely as my syllabus and plan is, I also know I have to be able to let it all go out the window as I learn how the group and individuals in the group approach learning to knit. This is important because I don't want any of them to walk away feeling that my agenda is more important than their opportunity to learn this wonderful skill. I especially hope to have a chance to get to know each student individually -- I do so enjoy the opportunity to get to know students when they are relaxed and enjoying themselves.

Wish me luck!

ON MY NEEDLES
OK, I caved and started another new project. The summer 2007 IK had a pattern for a yoga mat bag -- something I could definitely use! I'm using a soft sage green in Brown Sheep's Cotton Fleece.

I got another couple of inches done on my sister's shrug yesterday while watching a cheering competition -- my first. One of my sons joined the cheering team at school this fall and is now captain of the winter competition team. Yesterday was a "mock" competition, meant to help prepare the teams participating for the real thing starting next week. It was a good intro for me, too, as I've never been a cheering Mom before -- and, of course, a wonderful opportunity to knit!

I've also made some progress on Zeben's socks by taking them to the last two swim meets. They are the only project I have at the moment which don't take too much concentration and allow me to knit and watch the races. I could work on the shrug yesterday because I only had to really concentrate for a few minutes at a time and it was easy to put down what I was doing and give my full attention to each performance.

The back is done for the Tilted Duster. I'm going to try to do the front pieces simultaneously, but that will require some concentration as the directions are different for each (they are mirror images). The yarn is beautiful to work with and it moves along very quickly -- especially in contrast to the lace and sock yarn projects I've been working on!