Family Night Festivities

We’ve crossed the finish line in the current Beast to Blanket class!

Last week was Week 10, and we crammed our last lesson and Family Night into one day. Here’s what the display table looked like for our class:

I’ll say one thing for certain: This group was prolific in the finger knitting department! One of the students even finger knit some finger knitting to make the banner at the front of the table! She surprised me with it before class on Monday morning. I was so impressed with her creativity and so touched that she wanted to use it to decorate our table.

I want to share more about Family Night in a minute, but first I want to tell you about our last Beast to Blanket lesson. After the big push to get the knitted squares finished in time for me to assemble the class blanket, it seemed like the perfect ending to introduce the students to the low-stress activity of wet felting.

This was, in some ways, a trip back to the beginning of the whole Beast to Blanket process, as we were working with loose wool again, as in the Spinning lesson. This time we added some pre-dyed wool to the mix as well, in several colors so the students could enjoy whatever combinations they chose.

For this activity, we spread out the wool, gently pulled it into a workable length, and then loosely wrapped it around our hands and tucked in the ends to make a sort of ball.

That ball went into a plastic bag with a little hot water and a drop of soap. We removed the air from the bag and sealed it. Then we rubbed the wool in the soapy water inside the bag. You can do the same thing under running water or with wet wool and no bag, but I was trying to minimize the mess.

It doesn’t take long for the felting process to complete. A quick rinse of the suds revealed the students’ creations.

While we agreed they were very cool in and of themselves, the kids were quite creative in dreaming up potential uses for their pieces of felt. I suspect several may wind up as coasters or pin cushions.

I’ve seen some lovely examples of this sort of felting on Etsy, where people have made “pebble rugs” out of little connected felted stones. Another seller connects felted balls to make colorful trivets. These look like fantastic handmade gift ideas.

The student felting pieces were still a little damp Monday night, but they absolutely needed to be included on the class table with the other work.

About that other work…

This is one of those pictures that is deceptively simple. It looks like a collection of roughly rectangular pieces of garter stitch knitting, arranged to make a more-or-less regularly shaped blanket. And that description is true, as far as it goes. However, there are a lot of other stories represented here, including:

• Mutiple restarts and do-overs.
• Humility in asking for help in front of others.
• Victories over serious frustration and other big feelings.
• Perserverance in following through with a project all the way to completion.
• Joy in success and in contributing more to a group project than was required.
• A moving testimonial of a mom and child bonding over learning something new together.

These are some of the reasons I find teaching knitting to be so rewarding. So much more is gained than just the skills to make fabric from string. I love seeing these “squares” and knowing that each student has made a real journey from the beginning to the end. The errors and irregularities that are evident only attest to the authenticity of that journey.

Making a blanket from those squares is an adventure! For this class, I had all the pieces in hand Friday night, and needed to have the blanket finished no later than the following Monday afternoon. Thankfully, I had most of Saturday and Sunday afternoons clear to work on it.

I like using crochet to put the pieces together and fill in the empty spaces. There’s a lot more freedom in choosing size and direction of stitching, mostly because I’m only working with one stitch at a time rather than manipulating an entire row. I can shift the height of the stitches easily to fill in a small gap, or anchor in an extra loop here or there without it being terribly obvious.

Additionally, I’ve always been attracted to the process and fascinated by the finished pieces of freeform crochet I’ve seen, and this blanket-finishing method is not too distant a cousin to that.

After all the connecting and filling in, I crocheted a simple border around the edge.

With the exception of one square, all of these were made with the yarn the students dyed with Kool Aid during the first week of the class. I chose to use undyed yarn to set off their pretty colors.

Is it perfect? Nope. Not in the least. But I think the kids can be enormously proud of what they accomplished.

The blanket was given to an expecting alum of the home school group, and I know she’ll appreciate the labor that is represented in it.

We made sure it was the focus of our display for Family Night so the students could all show their contribution to their family and friends who came.

That table was crowded! It was a challenge to do justice to all the lessons the students learned and all the work they did.

As we spoke to them during the reception, we gathered that finger knitting was probably the most popular activity. I loved hearing the kids tell others about the projects they’d done. I’m hoping to ask the moms for some more formal feedback in a few days.

At one point during the reception, a student’s dad started asking lots of questions about the mechanics of spinning. People are often surprised by the simplicity of the process and it’s easier to show rather than explain. I brought my wheel down from the table to show him, and before long we were having a little spinning demonstration.

As usually happens, a small group gathered around to watch. This time, though, I was thrilled to hear some of my students doing the explaining as to what was happening and how what I was doing fit into their class.

It was a rewarding night for all of us!

Now I’m taking a deep breath before turning my focus toward getting the Beast to Blanket curriculum ready to share. Finishing the class with this group of students has given me so much encouragement to complete the process of putting it together and offering it.

I’ll keep you updated!

What are you working on today?

Happy knitting!

Kiersten J