A Teachable Moment

By Holly B. Smith
Cluster Specialist
Business Management Administration
Finance and Marketing

“Oh, Mom, why?” my daughter cried out as she walked in the room and saw me pulling out line after line of crochet stitches.  I’ve recently taken up the hobby after many years of forgetting it.  And, when she had such disappointment in her voice at the sight of my predicament, I knew what I had on my hands.  A Teachable Moment.  A teachable moment that didn’t revolve around seeing or hearing something on television and the ensuing discussion of why we don’t do or say that in our house.  I had an opportunity to make a connection between a practical act (of crochet) to the more abstract aspects of life.  Without launching into a droll, “In crochet, as in life……..” I managed to convey three important rules I’ve (re)learned about crochet.  And, life. 

1.       First and foremost, when you see a mistake, stop and correct it.

For my project, I hadn’t been careful to check my work every so often, every row at least, and when I spied my missed crochet (I left out a treble crochet which would have left a hole in the blanket), I had to tear out all of the stitches after it.  Set check points for yourself during a project so that you know you are on the right track.  Check for mistakes and fix them as you see them.

2.       Maintain proper, consistent tension.

For many crochet projects, the pattern will supply you with a “gauge” which is a method to measure your accuracy (2 inches = 8 double crochets).  Sometimes, you will have projects or homework assignments and you’ll know when you need to complete each part of it, and you may even be told how many words to write or pages to read.

Just as often, however, a crochet pattern will tell you “Gauge is not necessary for this project.”  With those, you have to set goals for yourself and try your hardest to stick to them.  I didn’t pay attention to the number of stitches on each row; therefore, my blanket had a hole and was going to be hopelessly crooked if I hadn’t made corrections.  If your teacher tells you to read every night, set aside the time to complete your 20 minutes.  If you wait until the last night to try and read four chapters of Snot Stew, you will probably end up skipping words or pages and miss out on parts of the story.

3.       Use a variety of color, pattern, length, textures, etc.

There is a growing variety of yarn available with bold color, pastels for infant projects, thick fuzzy yarns for winter scarves, thin and delicate threats for bookmarkers and necklaces, yarns that have a combination of three colors, two corresponding colors……the list goes on and on.  I try to think about the project and then go for a less obvious choice of yarn.  For example, I am currently working on what is called a “baby cocoon” which is a snuggly sack for a newborn.  I will make a matching baby hat for it, too.  Instead of using the traditional pastel yarn, I selected a multicolored skein with yellow, blue, and green.  It looks like the ocean.  With that thought, I found a pattern for small crochet fish that I’ll make in the dominant solid colors and sew on to the hat. 

When you have a project, a book report for example, sure you can write the report and stand up and read it.  But, think about how you can make it different.  Use pictures or funny quotes from the book.  Make a presentation or a colorful poster or book jacket.  Make bookmarkers for the class.  Present a list of vocabulary words you learned from the book.  Figure out what one of the main points of the book was and ask the class the question for discussion. 

My daughter, at the end of the talk, left me to continue my work.  Time will tell if she heard what I said; but, my sore hand and crochet callous tell me that I have much more to learn myself.