Students as Guinea Pigs

I spent three hours at the Verizon store Friday afternoon getting my phone replaced. Something went awry with one of the pieces of paperwork and it disappeared into the ether, never to be seen again, which then held up the rest of the process. The young man helping me was very apologetic, although it was hardly his fault. I ran errands at nearby stores while he untangled things.

I am thus far unimpressed with 2023.

The new phone is nice and I think the improvement in photo quality will be apparent. I went from a refurbished iPhone 8 to a new iPhone 14 only because they took my old phone on significant trade-in and gave me a loyalty discount.

I finished my class prep yesterday. I tend to go a bit overboard, but I would rather have too much material than too little. I also want to have a few things in my back pocket to pull out if it looks like students are getting frustrated. When that happens, it helps to have something to give them a quick win and get them back on track.

Honestly, I have enough material prepped that I probably could teach a three-hour class on each different presser foot, but we’re going to try to cram 3-4 feet into one three-hour session. I also made up kits for each student. I rarely do that, but for this class, it was appropriate. Some of the techniques require very specific materials and I want to make sure each student has the right ones. I’ve mentioned previously the student who came to one of my cable knitting classes—featuring a very fiddly technique—with navy blue sock yarn and size 2 needles for making samples. This class will go more smoothly if everyone has the same supplies provided by me. After I’ve taught it once, I can be more specific with the supply list.

The piping foot is one of the feet I am covering in class. I had already decided to whip up one of these tissue holders as a class sample. It features piping along each edge of the opening.

I followed the instructions from this video, if you’d like to try making one yourself. Each one only takes about 10 minutes. The fact that the pattern repeat lined up so perfectly was a total fluke, by the way, just in case you were thinking I was some kind of sewing genius.

As I was preparing to get started yesterday, I discovered that Gail Yellen had just posted a new video for a freebie serger project. She designed a padded hanger that featured zipper insertion using—you guessed it—the piping foot. I whipped up one of those, too, to have as a class sample:

Mine doesn’t look quite right because I didn’t have enough bubble wrap for the padding, but it illustrates the zipper insertion nicely.

I have to make a few tweaks to the class handout; otherwise, this one is all ready to go. Class prep takes an investment of time, but once it is done, it’s done. I’ve got quite an impressive list of serger classes I can teach. And I really appreciate that these students who sign up for my serger classes are letting me use them as guinea pigs.

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Nicole Sauce mentioned, on her Friday podcast livestream, that I am going to be a presenter at her Spring Workshop. She noted that this spring workshop will feature sessions on “homestead skills, including some of the feminine ones,” which made me laugh. She has a point, though. So many of these homesteading/prepper events are geared toward men, with a heavy emphasis on self-defense and outdoor skills. We haven’t settled on specific topics yet, but she has a list of what I’m willing to teach.

I started listening to her podcast because I was griping to the husband one day about how most of the homesteading podcasts hosted by men were full of testosterone and chest thumping. A few days later, he said to me, “I found you a homesteading podcast hosted by some woman in Tennessee. I think you’ll like it.” I listened to a couple of episodes, including the infamous squash episode, and was hooked.