How to keep sweaty cold drinks in your bag

One of the great things about summer in Montreal is that people distribute free drinks on the street. I love getting freebies, even though I normally don't drink sweet drinks. One thing that bothers me about a cold drink, though, is that I never finish it at once, and I don't know what to do with the sweaty cold bottle. I can't just wipe it; it keeps sweating until it is no longer cold and I don't want get things in my bag (or my bag) wet. I usually end up holding it in my hand and that is rather annoying.

So I crocheted myself a cold bottle holder. 100% cotton to absorb the sweat. Now I can keep my hands free without getting my bag wet!

Mesh hat for a student

I like teaching. I have taught at universities before and after I left academia, I taught crocheting lessons so that I can continue teaching. Teaching a skill is a bit different from teaching ideas and concepts alone. It's a new challenge and I love it.

I advertise my crocheting classes on www.Skillbuddies.com, and that got me a student who asked me to show her how to crochet a hat. I was so thrilled. I hadn't taught a class in a couple of months and I had really missed the process. It was late spring, so no one else had shown much interest in craft activities.

It happened that she wasn't a real beginner and she was very dexterous. I showed her double crocheting stitches and how to increase, so that she could make a real hat. I was impressed to she her "get it" so quickly. Interestingly, she finds it rather difficult to adjust the pattern to get the right fit. Interesting because that is the part I find easiest - I struggle to stay with the pattern as I get imaginative while crocheting and start to modify it as I like. I suspect that it may be me that made the adjustment process harder for my student to understand - it is harder to teach something you do by feeling; I wasn't using any objective measurement (like counting stitches) to determine when I needed to adjust. Next time I crochet out of pattern, I should pay more attention to what I do so that I can teach better than the Let-your-inspiration-guide-you! step....

Anyway, a couple weeks after that class, she asked me if I could teach her how to make a mesh hat. I had never crocheted mesh patterns, so I consulted my Crocheting Bible book, got the mesh pattern, calculated the increase and voila! I had my mesh cap.
Well, teaching that wasn't so easy. Modifying a mesh pattern, from what I figured, involves changing the stitch numbers of every mesh; a single change has a global consequence. So making any adjustments involves a lot of planing ahead. I did a lot of calculation, and still had to adjust here and there as I went. When I was teaching this process to my student, I realized that it is a lot of brain work - possibly too much - for someone who is still learning the new stitches and the basis patters to pay attention to all the possible alternatives while crocheting. So I learned something: when I teach a new pattern/new stitch, I should use a fixed pattern that does not require on-the-go adjustments. It should make the learning process easier.