September 27, 2015 – Keep Calm & Teach On

This week in CEP 810, we were asked to explore at least 2 types of technology that could help us “Get Things Done”. I was very excited to check out some different technologies in order to choose the best one that fit my needs. The two that I chose to explore were Evernote and Wunderlist.

I ended up choosing Wunderlist to help me get things done. The reason for this is that I have always made my “to-do” lists with a paper and pen and Wunderlist was pretty similar. There is just something about crossing off my tasks that gives me a sense of accomplishment.

Wunderlist is simple, can be accessed from any device, and still gives me the same satisfaction when finished with a task. One thing I wish that was included in Wunderlist is the ability to attach things like in Evernote. I believe it is available, just not in the free version, and it just doesn’t fit my budget right now. I am excited to continue using Wunderlist and have hope that it will help me stay organized and get things done. I encourage you to check out Wunderlist to see if it fits your needs! Here is a tutorial to help get you started!

A couple weeks into my Networked Learning Project and I am feeling a little bit relieved. I had decided that I wanted to knit an infinity scarf. As I mentioned in a previous post, I bought all of the materials LAST winter and just never got around to starting it. After my CEP810 course asked us to choose something we have always wanted to learn, I thought this was my perfect chance to give it a go! After lots of research watching YouTube videos and discovering help forums, I have come a long way in just a few short weeks!

First, I began by looking through different infinity scarf patterns using ravelry.com to get some idea of what I wanted my scarf to look like. I started my project already having size 15 needles and 3 spools of yarn that were purchased last year. A few different forums recommended a size 17 needle or bigger. One blog I found, stated that a smaller needle than the recommended one would work, the scarf just wouldn’t be AS chunky as the one that was displayed. I was okay with that and just wanted to get started right away! Both raverly.com and the blog contained a lot of information but seemed very overwhelming to me. It was more difficult for me to follow along so I looked to YouTube for help.

I kept coming back to this one video that I mentioned in my previous post. The woman in the video goes slow enough that I can keep up. I am a very visual learner and the way the camera was angled I could see the lady’s hands just as mine were displayed while watching the video. I decided to follow along with the lady in the video, however I decided on my own number of casts based on the width I wanted for my scarf. It took me about 10 tries of casting on in order to determine the amount that I felt was exactly what I had intended. I ended up with 25 cast on’s in order to get started.

Now that I had casted on, I needed to know how to actually knit. When looking at the forums I kept getting confused with the number of knits and pearls that each pattern had suggested. I was getting very frustrated and overwhelmed with all of the different suggestions. I am a visual learner and when I watch someone first and repeat their steps, I tend to get the hang of it a bit more. The video was definitely the most helpful and I continued to watch it and started working on an “English stitch”. This seemed to be the easiest for me and once I got the hang of it, I found it to be fun and relaxing.

Something that I definitely got stuck on was slipping the stitch off to begin my next row. The ends of my scarf look different at the beginning and I think that is due to the way my hands were placed when slipping the stitch off. After halfway through, I got my hands and the stitch to be consistent and it looked much neater.

Slip stitch once I got the hang of things.

I am now done with one spool of yarn and ready to begin another. I have already been looking up some forums on how to conjoin the two pieces of yarn and make it as unnoticeable as possible. One forum gives a suggestion of what to do and another YouTube video has given me some insight on it as well. I am so excited to finish my scarf and be able to put it to use!