As of today (well, yesterday, now; Monday afternoon), I am officially a professional knitting teacher.

I had two beginning knitting students this afternoon, one of whom became a beginning crochet student about 3/4 through the lesson. And I gave my Finishing class this evening, to Mindi, who’s a member of my spinning guild.

I’m so glad it was Mindi first! Because it turns out there were some mistakes in my pattern; I did one thing, wrote another (smacks forehead)! Result: seriously questionable buttonholes. The pattern is now corrected: preemie_baby_sweater.pdf, 187K (up from 183K; yes, it got a little wordier).

The other cool thing is that I found out I remember enough about crochet to teach it, at least at the beginner level. I haven’t worked enough crochet patterns to be all that hip to how things are shaped, and I might do a little head-scratching over a pattern, but I can chain and do single and double crochet.

Now about that alpaca sweater…The arithmetic is bogged down because I’m getting inconsistent measurements from one swatch to another. I’m leaning toward using the later ones, which are looser, probably more like what I’ll get when actually working the sweater. The problem has to do with the difference in gauge between garter stitch and my main/welt patterns; I’ll need to increase/decrease when switching from one to the other, and I need to know how much to increase or decrease. Need to steam and re-measure one more swatch and then I should be ready.

I sent the slippers off to Mom, and my brother says she got them, but she rushed me off the phone so I don’t know if they fit.

Oh, yeah, here’s the slippers with the clear dimensional fabric paint (okay, it’s mostly clear) dotted on the bottom to make them non-slip (ahem, taken with new camera):

Here’s a closeup. It looks kinda gross, actually, but it seems to work:

I’ll try to talk to Mom again tomorrow and see if she likes them.