A Gleneagle Digital Portfolio

Third In-Depth Blog Post [2022]

Good day! Welcome to my third in-depth blog post. Today I will be reporting on my progress and answering some questions about the theme of context within interactions. 

The first question I have chosen to answer is: “What went particularly well during your mentoring sessions?”. Quite a few things went very well, as my mentor is kind and understanding. I particularly like how we jumped right into the meeting and I began learning new skills and stitches right away. I vastly prefer learning from a person directly over a tutorial so they can let me know if I am making a mistake before it gets too bad to undo. I made a lot of errors and it took me a while to get the hang of it but my mentor was patient the entire time. I managed to feel like I had really accomplished something by the end of the first real, skills-oriented meeting (after the two for logistics and talking about materials), and that is very exciting for me. 

The second question I will answer is “What relationship challenges did you face – Were you communicating effectively/actually listening to each other?”. My mentor and I generally have good communication, but we have had some challenges.I find that my mentor prefers it when I watch her demonstrate a skill first before I try to follow along, whereas sometimes I tend to rush ahead or try to follow along step-by-step. I find that when it comes to learning new stitches my mentor’s method is much better, and I also have to use specific squares to conserve fabric space for the pattern which makes it important to pay attention. I am very excited y this new skill so I do not often find it difficult to actually listen to my mentor, and I can tell from my mentor’s understanding and ability to figure out what problems I may have that she is always listening to what I have to say respectfully. 

The third and final question I will answer today is “What three strategies could improve the quality of your mentoring interactions?”. A strategy I could use is the one mentioned above, where I actually watch my mentor demonstrate a skill or a stitch before I attempt to do it myself to make sure I do not waste time doing something incorrectly because i missed the details. Another strategy I could use is setting goals at the beginning of each meeting so my mentor knows what she should teach me and what she should leave me to practice on my own. A third strategy, connected to the aforementioned one, is saving a lot of the practice for after the meeting in order to save instructional time. My mentor wanted me to complete a few rows of stitches during our meeting to make sure I understood the concept and stitched in the right direction, but now that I know the fundamentals I can easily self-teach the remaining stitches and practice the ones I know on my own time. My mentor has begun implementing this strategy in limited contexts. 

So far, I have made progress in learning the fundamentals of my skill. While I have not started any projects, I learned how to work with a needle in a cross-stitch setting (it is very different from how you would thread a needle in sewing for example), several different types of stitches including the quarter stitch and the full cross stitch and a few tips for working with Aida cloth (like the best way to undo stitches).

My practice rows of basic stitches + the quarter stitch I just learned

I learned some ground rules like keeping all my rows going in the same direction. I also started looking at patterns for my projects and as some inspiration. I have practiced my stitches so I could get a better grip on speed, consistency and tension on the corner of my fabric. I am yet to learn a few more stitches, how to read patterns and how to put these stitches together, but that should be easy after I master what I have learned in recent weeks!

A pattern I liked! I find my eye attracted to the more modern-looking geometric patterns. Definitely beyond my skill level right now but serves for good inspiration.

Thank you for reading my third in-depth blog post. I learned a lot about the ways one can improve their communication and build a better relationship with their mentor in order to improve their skills!

• March 4, 2022


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