Day ??? so I'm behind! Make it Day 10

Okay, I have fallen behind and for no real good reason, just work, dog training, shopping and wrapping gifts. Also, come to think of it, starting new projects, restarting the same project and now I have to restart it again.

The new Crochet Today from Vogue came out and there are some terrific projects in it. Now I readily admit that I am not the crocheter that I am a knitter or weaver or spinner or a few other things, but I do crochet. There are two really good afghans in the magazine and a cute dress and some darling baby hats. But the afghans grabbed me. They also grabbed Carolyn Bergman who teaches classes here. So I decided to start one. And miracles of miracles my swatch came out perfectly. So I started the afghan, Then decided to switch the color order, so started it again, realized I miss-counted rows and started it again. Then my gauge seemed to tighten up. When Carolyn came today, we discussed it and figured, 'oh, well'. I chalked it up to my hands and the cold, Sounded good, anyway. Then today I was looking for something and there under something else was my J hook. Seems that I put the project down and when I picked it up again, I took a smaller hook. So tonight I will unravel what I have done - almost half the afghan - and start again with the J hook.

I have also started Josse - Josephine, our baby Yorkie - in Cyberagility classes. I guess that I did write that we were going to start. I am a clicker trainer, which means that we work with positive reinforcement only. Our first lesson was on targeting. For you non-dog trainers out there, we teach targeting so that the dog will go to a certain spot and touch it either with a nose or a paw - at least that is the simplest way to describe it. To move to step 2, the dog has to be able to touch the target held in the hand 10 times in 40 seconds. As they touch each time, I click and produce a treat, all in the 40 seconds too. At first Josse was unsure of what I wanted but she soon caught on, the trouble was the Cheerios that I had broken into 3s and was using as a treat. Josse had lost all her front baby teeth a couple of weeks ago. The new ones are coming in but she is now losing the back ones. And Cheerios maybe be okay for coming in from outdoors but now for real work. So I switched to the good stuff - cheese. She quickly went from 10 clicks in 1 minute 10 seconds to 10 clicks in 42 seconds - I dropped a treat so she had to look for it. And then 10 in 30 seconds. You see when the reward was good enough the performance improved. And today she happily showed Carolyn how she can do it.

Our next step is to change the position of the target. Now this all, rather, reminds me of my afghan. I have had to progress through steps to get the stitch right and then the gauge to having a successful project. It didn't all happen on the first try and I had to see some reward in the process. In my day teachers understood this and we got gold stars on our papers. As we got older the reward grew until it was the grades that we earned. But there was some reward for a good job and for increasing our ability. No increase, no reward or at least less of a reward. It works the same for me today but I set many of my own goals and I set the reward or aim for a reward determined by others. I grew up in an atmosphere where often the reward was pleasing our family, no fancy treats. We never received money or presents for good grades or doing household chores but we did get the positive approval from our family. I sometimes wonder if we haven't stretched the reinforcements to the limit at the beginning and we get to the cheese too soon. Maybe that is why we feel that we have to make the Holidays into an orgy of buying.

I need to chew on this for awhile, maybe while I am unraveling my afghan tonight. But in the meantime, I have learned a couple of new crochet stitches, seen how two of my color choices work together, learned a whole lot about crochet gauge and I can now do the afghan pattern without thinking - at least to where I am now! All in all not all that bad but it sure puts me behind in my other projects. And by the way, I love my throw and I have received a number of positive comments on it, including hearing that it is much more attractive on my body then it is laying flat.

So keep reaching out for new patterns and stitches. Playing with yarn can teach us all sorts of new things.