Congratulations on arriving to the last week of instruction of YOUR ENTIRE HIGH SCHOOL CAREERS!! I'm so excited for you all! ProgressUmmm... yeah so I made a lot of progress. I guess I kind of hit my knitting stride. Also, I turned out to be an accidental genius because knitting goes great with grading the recordings of your book club meetings, so... Here I am. In the very position of finishing something faster than I thought I would. I can't stress enough how this never happens in my life. In my update a week ago, I had just finished the yoke and knitted about 12 inches or so total of the body of the sweater. This week I completely finished the body, all 25 some odd inches of it. I also knitted about 12 inches of one of the sleeves. In the first and second weeks of this project I knitted about 1 skein per week, which is 200 yards (400 yards total). This past week I knitted nearly two entire skeins in just a week, which means I accomplished almost exactly double the number of stitches. When I started on the sleeves I switched over to the four 5 millimeter double-sided needles, which I think you'll agree are crazy looking. I'm also doing fancy stitches again: decreasing instead of increasing, and varying two different textures, the garter stitch and the stockinette stitch. Updated DeadlineYeah, so I'm updating my deadline by moving it up, WHICH HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE. I think I can have this sweater finished the by June 15th. Skills, Obstacles, MistakesThere have been mistakes (like the neckline mentioned in my first update), and detours (like finishing Bracken's coat as related in the second update), but more than anything else, I think I've learned a LOT. Also, kind of amazingly, the sweater is on track to be an actual wearable piece of clothing. As I discussed in my project proposal, this has not always been the case with past knitting projects. Planning My Next ProjectI've gotten really excited about planning my next project. I bought some new yarn with the idea of making a coat for Birdie so that she isn't so jealous of Bracken. BUT. I changed my mind. First of all, the yarn is super, super soft and such a crazy color. Also, even though it's single ply like the roving yarn I used for Bracken's yellow sweater, it's a different weight. It's super bulky instead of bulky, which might make the jacket a bit trickier. So, I've decided I'm going to make myself the pinkest and longest scarf in the world. Final ThoughtsI cooked up this crazy project idea because I wanted our last generative thing together to be something meaningful to each of us. And I was feeling the languishing, as I mentioned to you back in the intro post to the project. I designed my project to try to counteract the languishing and get back to a flourishing, as described by that New York Times article. As astonished as I am that things are going more quickly than I imagined, and that the thing twirling off my needles is taking a shape close to the one I was aiming for, I am even more amazed that planning and executing this weird knitting project actually did bring me closer to the flourishing end of the scale. I don't understand it, but I'm grateful. I hope that your experience with your own project brought you some sense of joy or satisfaction, as well.
The week of your AP Lit Exam has arrived! Good luck to you all :) I have a feeling you are all going to blow this test away. And now, my 2nd Progress Update Model Text: My ProgressInch-wise, I've grown my green sweater from 7 inches to 12 inches. That's an additional five inches, which of course is less apparent progress than last week. However, because of the increases, I think I actually knitted more stitches than last week, or at least a comparable amount, judging by the small amount of yarn left in my second skein. I'll probably finish my second skein of yarn tomorrow. It's also definitely starting to look like sweater. You can see the neckline and each of the arm holes. Week 1 vs Week 2 ProgressI'm happy with progress. I've finished all the black magic witchery of increases that turns a string of yarn into a seamless garment, and now I'm just knitting the body, by far the largest section of the sweater. It's also the simplest section of the sweater. For the next week at least (and probably for the next two weeks) it'll just be knit stitch after knit stitch after knit stitch after knit stitch. Since all the fancy needlework is behind me for now, I can zone out even more as I knit. This is a great section to knit as I watch shows in the evening with my husband. We've been rewatching Avatar the Last Airbender together for like the 20th time or so. As you know, one of my intrinsic motivations for knitting a sweater was to feel that mindful calm that comes with the repeated motions of knitting. It's all been working: I've been feeling both the calm from the repetition (serotonin) and the joy of seeing something grow (dopamine). Now, you might very well ask, if you get so much joy out of knitting, why haven't you been doing it this whole time, Ms. Newton? I stopped knitting back in the beginning of the semester because I hit a roadblock of sorts. Allow me to explain... Lessons and ObstaclesBack during the winter apocalypse, I learned that my dogs Birdie and Bracken loved romping in the snow. Bracken and Birdie both outgrew their dog coats, but Bracken's coat fits Birdie now. Poor Bracken was jacketless. I decided I would knit him a coat out of this mustard-colored roving yarn from Canada. I finished it a few weeks after I started it, but I my cast-off was too tight to fit around Bracken. I put the whole project in a pile and just decided to fix it later. I didn't want to start a new project, because I had an unfinished dog coat, and I didn't want to finish the dog coat because I didn't know how. And this was my obstacle. But, as you know, we're all starting projects together, so I started an entirely new thing: my green sweater. And somehow, somewhere in all the pleasant mind-wandering I've been doing as I've knitted my green sweater, I started figuring out ways to undo the mistake and try again. The next time I tried, the cast-off was still too tight. So I put it aside again and kept knitting the green sweater. Eventually, almost by accident I had yet another idea. AND IT WORKED. So the take-away lesson here for me is a reminder that one of the strongest strategies for overcoming creative obstacles is to start a new project and let my subconscious simmer away until solutions materialize. I like how the first solution didn't work. Then I shelved the thing again, and in my mind said something like, "Well, I'll get back to this in another five months or so," but I had another idea almost immediately. Brains are weird.
Hopefully by the time I've published this, we all have submitted (or resubmitted) our project proposals and had them approved by me. We have so many different types of projects: gardens, cooking, building, engineering, making, songwriting, song learning, short story writing, language learning, physical challenges. It's going to be a good month. Project Update #1My MaterialsIn my experience, the yarn usually comes before the project. There’s this super weird store in Houston called Texas Art Asylum. It’s like a thrift store designed for artists. You can buy yarn there, and it was from this higgledy piggledy stash of donated yarn that I first found and worked with Cloudborn. It’s a Peruvian Highland worsted weight. Nothing super special, although nicer than the yarn you can find at Hobby Lobby and places like that. I love the texture of the wool, and the way the stitches look when they come together. Last December, I saw that Cloudborn was discontinuing their product line, so I bought some more worsted for myself online, enough for green sweater (Moss) and a variegated blue sweater (Delphinium.) One of my favorite essayists these days writes essays on color and culture for the Paris Review. Her name is Katy Kelleher, and one of her essays is on Hooker’s Green, which is basically the color of my sweater. I’ll also be using 5mm bamboo Takumi circular needles and 4mm and 5mm double-pointed wooden needles for the sleeves. The most important notions for this project (the name for the little things) are the multi-colored plastic stitch markers that tell me when to change or add stitches. (Isn’t notions a great word for this?) My ProgressI began knitting my sweater last Monday, May 3rd. In the beginning my sweater didn’t exist except as six balls of yarn. This is my progress as of Monday May 10th. This is a top-down sweater, so as you can see, I’ve knitted 7 inches of the yoke. I’m just a couple of inches shy of the place where I will separate the sleeves from the body of the sweater. I’ve done three different types of stitches so far: ribbing, stockinette, and garter stitch. I’ve also done increases in a triangular raglan pattern to shape the neckline. Initial DeadlineThe different parts of the sweater take varying amounts of time. The body, for instance, will take much more time than the yoke or a sleeve. Instead of using my progress on my sweater to estimate my remaining time, I’m going to use the total yardage. It took me about a week to knit one 200 yard skein’s worth of sweater. My finished sweater will be composed of a little less than 6 skeins of yarn. So, factoring in some travel I have scheduled for June, my hard deadline for my completed sweater will be Monday, July 5th. New Skills, Obstacles, MistakesI never had to just increase a round without any specific guidance or spacing before. It took a tutorial and some low level math, but I figured it out in the end. And, although I’ve knitted front and back (Kfb) before with increases, I do not consider this a stitch that I completely understand, so I consulted YouTube. I made some mistakes in the initial ribbing and created something that looks like a moss stitch. Even though it departs from the pattern, this is an example of a mistake that I like to make. It looks cool and I learned something.
Hey class! Below is my model text for the personal project proposal. If you want to check out the descriptions of the different sections of the proposal, you can find them here. I can't wait to see what you guys chose to work on! Annilee Newton Personal Project Proposal, May 20211. Context
For my project, I’ve chosen to knit a green sweater. I’ve knit before, but I am definitely still a beginner, maybe an advanced beginner if you are grading on a curve. When I was very little, my mom taught me how to crochet, and ever since then I’ve been drawn to making things with yarn. For a long time, knitting seemed like the scary, unachievable, almost mystical side of the craft. (I mean what are those needles even doing? How can it be possible to make a sweater with no seams?) I started to teach myself to knit in 2019, and knit a bit more through the early bits of 2020. I’ve knit several scarfs, mittens, a cardigan that was stitched together and a purple sweater top-down sweater that was a humbling and humorous failure. So this will be my third sweater knitting attempt, and hopefully my first successful no seams pullover sweater. 2. Challenge For me, the biggest benefits of knitting come from the process. Having a product is nice, but it is almost like an afterthought. The process of choosing the yarn, selecting and decoding the pattern, and gathering supplies is the dreaming visionary phase when creativity and fun come into play. In the case of this particular project, I bought the yarn and chose the pattern about 6 months ago. At the beginning of the execution of the project, problem solving is a big deal as I begin to turn the pattern into reality. There’s eventually a lot of soothing repetition, which feels like a form of meditation to me. And then comes the low-key ever present wonder of watching a two-dimensional string turn into a three dimensional (sometimes) functional piece of clothing. The product itself becomes almost an artifact of the process, not the point. So for me, the personal benefits come from the mindfulness aspect of the project and the dopamine that comes from seeing something grow tangibly in response to effort. 3. Benefits Our time is a limited resource. There are many projects I’d like to do (many, many projects) and time limitations have always been the most important problem when it comes to choosing a project. After deciding that we would all collectively use our remaining class time together to invest in personal projects that are meaningful to each of us, it took me a while to settle on one. I chose this one for the intrinsic reasons mentioned above, but it will also have extrinsic benefits. As a model project for students, the sweater will give visual information of my progress. The mindfulness aspects of knitting benefit me, of course, but being more mindful always has benefits to my relationships with others. Sympathy, understanding, and wisdom have a better chance of surviving the onslaught of life when my mind is calm. 4. Deliverables My deliverable will be my progress on the sweater itself. As evidence of my deliverable, I will be including photos with my weekly progress updates. 5. Success Criteria So, I thought about making the success criteria product-based, something like “I will knit a sweater in a month.” But the stress of product-based deadlines kind of nullifies the process-based benefits of my project. So, a month from now, I will know I have been successful if I have grown my sweater every day. If I spend the equivalent of 25 minutes knitting every day, and I have visual progress of my sweater at the end of each week, I will consider myself successful. However, I also have to finish the sweater. Clearly written, here are the two concrete aspects by which I will judge the success of the project:
6. Deadlines/Plan
7. Time Budget On the weekdays, I will knit in the afternoons, after teaching morning classes. If an afternoon doesn’t work for some reason, I will knit in the evenings while watching old reruns of Alias or listening to records. Weekends, I’ll use knitting as a mind-preparation tool for writing. So, I’ll knit before I start drafting my work for my writing workshop in the mornings. If I ever hit a snag in my writing, I’ll pick up the knitting again, and vice versa. If I can’t knit for a day because I get too busy or I go camping or something, then I’ll knit another 25 minutes the next day. I want to average at least 3.5 hours of work on my project per week. Let's go through a quick explanation of what the book clubs will entail. This week, you'll be meeting with your group (either during content hour or an alternate time) to structure and set-up the remaining three meetings. You will decide on meeting times/days and figure out how many pages to read for each meeting. In the rest of this uncharacteristically short blog post, I'll be talking about how to prepare for your book club discussions to make sure they are successful. As you read, you'll need to leave breadcrumbs for yourself along the words so that you can find the most interesting bits to talk about with your group. You can't underline/highlight the book itself, or you can right little notes in a notebook as you read. Point is, you are in charge of directing the attention of the group for ten to fifteen minutes. To help you with this, you'll each be turning in 100 words of "discussion notes" before each meeting. These will be independently submitted to me in the HUB. A Possibly Helpful List of Stuff You Can Talk AboutFor the most part, you guys know how to talk about a book. Or a song, or the news, or whatever interests you. I usually suspect the best stuff happens in our class when I shut up and students start talking with each other. BUT, just in case, here's a list of things that can be fruitful to pay attention to as you read because they usually have the potential to lead to interesting discussions.
The only thing in that list that I want to elaborate on is the first item: emotions. I remember good old Dr. Hauer (You all have heard of him before: History of English Language and Shakespeare prof.) telling us to pay attention to how we felt as we read King Lear. This felt revolutionary to me on some level. When it came to literature, especially Shakespeare, on some level I felt as if I had always been told to prostrate myself before THE CLASSICS. So classical, so lofty, so inhuman. In the same class, Dr. Hauer accidentally gave me permission to hate works of ESTEEMED LITERATURE when he told me hated Francis Bacon, a writer anthologized in our big old Norton Anthology. A weird thing to have to have permission for, I guess, but I've certainly never looked back. (I hate Bukowski and Kerouac, in case you're interested.) Real classics are classic BECAUSE they are human. Real literature makes us feel. So always pay attention to how you feel when you read, or if you even feel anything at all.
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AuthorI'm a Houston high school teacher. Welcome to my adapted, socially-distanced, quarantined AP English Literature and Composition classroom. Archives
May 2021
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