A blog about my life, knitting, and other stuff.

February 12, 2005

On the Upswing

Thanks everyone. I felt pretty self-indulgent laying out that pity party yesterday when there are people in the world with real problems. But what the hell. It's my blog.

A special thanks to Deb who sent me a cheer up e-card. It was very sweet.

After crying in my car last night things began improving (not citing any correlation between these). I watched a movie with Wes and worked on my second Sockapalooza sock. I have about four inches of the cuff done already. This one is really sailing off my needles. Ahhh.

Today I taught my first real class. I'm teaching socks on two circulars using the Broadripple pattern. I made everyone do a small swatch. I called it a half-assed swatch. I had them cast on 50-60 sts. Taught them how to set it up on two needles, join in the round and had them knit for a while. Then we looked at their knitting to see how they were doing on gauge. This took the first hour of class. I worried that I was wasting their time but two students were way off gauge and were able to switch needles before starting the actual sock. This also gave everyone a chance to cast on, set up their stitches on two needles and join in the round twice, which I do think is valuable. Then I helped them through the first few rows of the pattern. Then they had to go. They all need to finish the leg of the first sock this week. We'll see if that happens... I cast on a second time, joined in the round and knit one-quarter of my first row. I was too busy going around the table helping everyone else out. I need to do a lot of knitting on this by next Saturday. I forgot what a fun, easy pattern Broadripple is. I hope my students feel the same way. As always happens in a class there was a very wide range of skill and experience among the students. I hope the more experienced students felt like they got something out of it.