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Showing posts from April, 2012

Teaching knitting in the age of information

I was asked by a friend for help with a knitting project.  This is a new knitter (comparatively) and she was reaching beyond scarves.  She had picked a pattern online and was stuck at a slightly ambiguous instruction.  I got the pattern company and pattern name, I downloaded it, I printed it off.  Then we got down to cases.  Where EXACTLY was she stuck?  Figured that out.  So then I walked her through the confusion step by step.  I did all this with her 50 miles from me sitting in her house and I in mine.  On Facebook chat. To me, this is an incredible thing.  I went to college.  I took "Computer Programming and Statistics".  Never in my wildest DREAMS would I expect to chat to my friends (anywhere in the WORLD).  Never did I think I would solve knitting dilemmas on chat. Now I grant you, we DID set up a knitting fun day at the same time.  We're meeting and having a fiber fest in a couple of weeks.  Nothing takes the place of being in the same room, but when you are

Jerome's Sock

I was thinking the other day about Jerome's Sock.  It's always capitalized, always.  Here goes. Once, when I was teaching a sock knitting class at a local yarn shop, I had a student, Mary, who was knitting a pair of socks to surprise her husband, Jerome. We were about halfway through the four weeks of class, and one evening just as I was getting ready to leave for class, my phone rang. “Hello, this is Andrew from Alaska Airlines.   This is going to sound strange, but your business card was found in a bag of knitting on one of our flights.” Okay. “There was also a note in the bag that says ‘Jerome 10 ½ inches’.   There is a lot of needles in there, it sort of looks like it might be a sock?   We know you were not a passenger, but I wondered…” The penny finally dropped.   Jerome!   Oh heavens!   I told Andrew that the knitting was not mine, but one of my students.   Could I come and get it?   (I live very close to the airport)   I certainly could, as Andrew really didn’t