Trundling through life: Learning

Showing posts with label Learning. Show all posts

08 January 2026

Learning

One of the things those Roman soldiers of old did in their hibernaculum was to train. My equivalent is to learn.

I'm a member of the Women's Institute and the National Federation of Women's Institutes has a great learning hub. Anyone can do their courses but if you are a WI member, most courses are free. Most weeks I do at least one session and in the winter I do far more. yesterday I excelled myself and did two in one day.

The first was on odes by Keats. I've got to admit that my knowledge of Keats doesn't go much beyond "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness". I can't say I will be buying myself a new book of poems as a result of listening to this talk but I certainly feel more interested and may check out a few more writings by Keats.

Yesterday evening I joined in the monthly drawing session. We are not talking detailed masterpieces here: it's more about getting a sheet of paper and your felt tip pens and doing a bit of mindfulness. I quite like the class as each of us is in our own homes. There's no comparison with anyone else, we each do our own thing with the instructor's help. Yesterday she had prepared a picture of part of a crab apple hedge for us to copy.

08 August 2025

Learning

Once a month I go back to Primary School! No, not liberally, but a primary school teacher does a monthly drawing session on the WI Learning Hub. And I think my results are the sort of thing her usual pupils would produce. I'm quite happy with that. Children's drawings often make me smile! There are lots of other sessions on the hub for people with varying degrees of artistic ability but this is just fun.

This week I am also doing a Shakespeare Summer School on Hamlet on the learning hub and next week we move on to Measure for Measure. Just an hour a day. Next week there is also a hand embroidery summer school which I will be joining. All these sessions will be recorded so if I'm busy at the time the live session is streamed, I can watch later. I've done sessions on using my iPhone, budgetting, decluttering, travel, and much, much more.

Other than the summer schools, most courses are free for WI members.

04 November 2022

TWO

TWO? That Was October!
It was the month I turned 71 and celebrated suitably. In fact, two weeks on, I am still going out for birthday meals. I was supposed to go out today but a friend has the dreaded C***d so we have had to postpone.

I've been doing a lot of craft courses, We have a local set-up called CLIP, Community Learning in Partnership, and I have done a Christmas fabric craft course and a rag quilting course with them. Both are on-going but I thought you might like to meet my gnome. I have called him Dopey. The rag quilting is with pre-loved fabrics which I've found in charity shops.

I've also done an on-line macrame course with Hobbycraft and made two trees and a star. It was supposed to be a garland but I may detach the things from the garland and just hang on my tree.

I had my breast screening and got the all-clear again so that also makes me very happy.

I have been rather active in leading worship and have visited several new-to-me churches which I may write about sometime.

Not a bad month. (Except that Blogger is being even more temperamental than usual.)

23 August 2022

A Previous Playtime

Writing about my lino cutting playtime reminded me that I haven't blogged about some playtime I had in July. I went on a hand sewing workshop but I have to confess I brought my stuff home and finished it by machine!

Several ideas for small gifts I feel.

But maybe without the wobble on the coaster.

Fabric pot

Wobbly coaster

Notebook

Key fob

21 August 2022

Playtime

So many things close down in August! What I really miss is opportunities to craft. I enjoy going to craft classes both for learning and also for the socialising. Socialising still happens in August but learning doesn't.

So I decided to give Hobbycraft on line courses a try. I hadn't done any lino cutting for about fifty years so that seemed a good one to try. £30 sounded reasonable.

Last week I received the kit in the post. There was basic lino printing equipment: a lino knife with three interchangeable blades, a plastic tray (for ink) a brayer (paint roller) two lino sheets and some black printing ink. They also sent an A3 artist's pad, an A5 notebook, a pencil, a hand safety guard and a couple of templates. I priced the whole lot on-line at £33.50.

The course was on-line and there were eight participants. The instructor was very good and I did this print. It was much more enjoyable than I remembered. The lino is now much easier to cut and the hand guard takes away the danger to one's fingers!

I shall definitely have another playtime but this time on my own.

13 August 2019

A favourite website

I love words. One of my reasons for publishing this blog is that I enjoy writing short pieces and thinking of the best ways to express my thoughts. Each post is saved for a while before it is published and by the time I hit the publish button I will have re-read a post several times. I like to structure my writing and vary my use of language.

And I love words! "Serendipity" is a word which always makes me smile. "Clariflocculator" is a lovely bubbly word. "Twill" is a short word which suits its meaning and suggests purposefulness and smartness.

I could go and on but as you will have guessed from the title of the post, I want to suggest a lovely website, viz. https://wordsmith.org Each week they have a series of linked words - this week all the words are to do with space and space travel. Sometimes they are words which I know already: today's word is "light-year" but I enjoy the background information and derivation of the word. Did you know that to get a light-year’s worth of frequent-flier miles you’d need to travel between New York and Moscow only a little over a billion times? Me neither and I'll probably have forgotten by this time next week but it has amused me today. Sometimes they are words which I have never heard - could you tell me the meaning of satyagraha? No? Well, I'll tell you that it's the policy of passive nonviolent resistance as a protest against injustice. It was coined by Gandhi during the independence struggles in India and is again in use by civil rights activists.

Each day I get an email from the site. Why not pop over and take a look!

12 September 2017

Mooc-ing around

I love Moocs! Moocs are Massive Open Online Courses and you can find them at Futurelearn and Coursera. They are free courses offered by top universities all over the world. There's no written work just discussion forums to allow participants to engage with each other on line.

I've done several including

You and your money - offered by the Open University

Strategies for successful aging offered by Trinity College Dublin

Exploring anatomy offered by the University of Leeds

Researching your family tree, offered by the University of Strathclyde

Maths puzzles offered by the Weizman Institute

and quite a lot more.

Not all are on offer at the same time so you need to check regularly.

Today I have started a course about the weather. It's being offered by the University of Exeter and I'm not sure if it's offered internationally although most Futurelearn courses are but the examples in this one seem to be all British. It promises to teach about the weather with regard to walkers, photographers and gardeners so it should prove interesting and IT'S FREE!!!

28 June 2016

Deep down in the burrow

Many creatures live deep down in the earth, hidden from view. We can see them when they come out to find food but much of their lives are hidden.

Have you ever wondered what rabbits do when want to put their feet up? Well, now I can tell you. They watch TV!

I made this model yesterday. Turn the handle and the channels change. The Rabbit family has a choice of Rabbit TV (home styling, I think), Carrot TV (food and cooking) and Fox TV (horror movies)

09 May 2016

Pigs can't fly but cows can.

Remember the dog which ate my homework?

I made a friend for him today. A flying cow.

26 April 2016

Learning again!

You know what they say about waiting for ever for a number eleven bus then three come along at once? Well, substitute learning activities for the number eleven and it's been like that for me.

On Friday I went to Mandy and made cards, yesterday the dog ate my homework, and today I've been to a hanging basket class. It was for our Trefoil Guild (Girlguiding for Grownups) and a we went to the Willows Garden Centre at Glentham, a few miles from here. It's quite a small garden centre but it's very friendly and eight of us had the run of the plant area as we made up the hanging baskets for our homes. I made two and had a lovely time! They are standing in large plant pots here as that is the easiest way to hold them steady.

The best bit about doing them at the garden centre is that we could help ourselves to whatever plants we wanted as we wanted them and we paid when we had finished. Afterwards we all went into the restaurant and indulged. Not a bad day out! We've all decided that we would like to do the same thing next year.

I'll try to photograph them for this blog as the year progresses. They will have to stay inside for a few weeks. We've had glorious sunshine and sharp hailstones here today. Weird weather!

25 April 2016

The dog ate my homework!

One of the best things about retirement is the opportunity of learning new things. I've written before about MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and opportunities to go on day, evening or weekend courses but just recently I decided to join our local U3A - the University of the Third Age.

U3A isn't as solemn as it sounds. Each month there is a general meeting which includes a talk - next month ours is on Morecambe and Wise "with a bit of magic thrown in" but there are also small interest groups. I've signed on for just one for starters - paper engineering. This morning I went to my first session and we made this model.

It's quite hard to photograph because it's actually a moving model with cams to cause the dog to shake his head as though "worrying" the book - there's a handle on the far side to turn to make this happen.

Next time we've been promised a flying cow. Watch this space!

08 February 2016

ITMA

It's that MOOC again!

The MOOC "Know Your Abdomen" was the shortest I have done so far at just two weeks but I was so fascinated I actually finished it in two days. I've signed on for a follow up course starting at the end of March.

As well as that I went to Futurelearn.com and found that Trinity College Dublin offers a course called "Strategies for Ageing" which starts today so I signed up.

I am now umpty-twiddly-four and I'm hoping that before too long I will work out what I am going to do when I grow up but whilst I'm working that out I might as well work out what I'm going to do when ageing strikes. I don't want to be defined by the date on my birth certificate either by others or by myself. So far I'm having a great retirement and if I can discover ways of making it even better, lead me to 'em.

One of the great quotes in an early session is from Satchel Paige, an American baseball player whom I'd never heard of. How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were?

Well, how old would YOU be?

01 February 2016

Moocs

Sometimes I surprise myself. Not often, but sometimes.

I've never seen myself as being interested in science but since I retired I've started to look anew at things which I never had time for (or interest in) in my younger life.

Today I started a new MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) this time from the University of Leeds. It's called Know Your Abdomen.

I don't know about you but my abdomen is one of those areas I've always preferred to forget about. Every so often I have to think about it, generally when something goes wrong. I have hazy memories of O level Biology lessons at school but hazy is actually quite a generous description of my memory. Anyway, I decided that it might be interesting to get to know a little more so today I started my latest MOOC. This particular course was written for school students but "slightly more mature people" like me are also welcome.

And I was delighted that the course began with an illustration from someone even older than me - Leonardo da Vinci.

But really my delight for today is realising that I can surprise myself and that I still take pleasure in learning

23 January 2016

A Skill acquired

I mentioned a few days ago that I had been sent some lovely wool and I was knitting a cowl. Well, the cowl is now made. As you can see, it will be VERY cosy when I go out on the trundle truck!

To take the pictures I had to find out how to take a selfie using my web cam. So I'm feeling proud that I have a new skill and I am delighted that I can still learn.

18 January 2016

Welcome back, mojo!

A very quick joy today!

I went to a dressmaking class today at Jane White Couture Tuition and am now well on the way to being the possessor of a new skirt. Unfortunately although the spirit was willing the flesh was struggling rather painfully today and I could only stay for about two and a half hours but I can do the rest at home.

So today's pleasure was sewing, whether at home or with others. It's ages since I made myself a garment and I feel as though I've got something of my mojo back and I've booked another session next week.

08 December 2014

Getting a little more creative

I'm sorry I haven't published a Pause in Advent yet. I may have to miss this week as the piece I wrote wasn't really satisfactory and it may be better to hang on until next Sunday.

Anyway, 'tis the season to be crafting and today I've been on a Christmas creativity work shop. First we made a couple of cards

Then we made a pomander. I enjoyed doing this as I'd wanted to make one since I saw them on Blue Peter at least fifty years ago!

We made a pretty (fabric) gift bag and I'm now wondering just how to fill it.

And we also made some fairy lights which I didn't get finished and I'm not going to let you see them until I do!

I've had a lovely day and I'm going to have a lovely early night.

12 August 2014

A Better way of Hoarding

I love learning! I’m not talking about doing more exams but rather learning for the sheer joy of new knowledge. I’ve been a terrible hoarder of things, now I’m a hoarder of knowledge and experience.

This year I have already done a one day course on Copperplate at Knuston (I'm on the right with my back to you all!)

and creative embroidery at Glastonbury. (The picture on the right is an unfinished piece which I have since finished.)

Yesterday the prospectus came for Knuston Hall, an adult residential College in Northamptonshire. They offer a very tempting range of short courses and I’ve got my eye on a Christmas Craft two day course in October. If I did that I could get several Christmas presents made and it would still give me time to create using any new skills before Christmas. It will involve a very careful checking of my finances.

But what amazes me is the range of learning I can find on the web. I’ve long used YouTube and other sites to learn a special technique but this year I have discovered the free courses offered by colleges and universities all over the world. This year I have already done a course on Kitchen Science (tea bag rockets anyone) and Managing my Finances. They were offered by the Open University and the University of East Anglia and were brilliant. Although they are offered by Universities they are within the capabilities of a very average person like myself. Today someone has e mailed me about a photography course offered by an Australian University and I am more than a little tempted. All these are free courses. Local authority sponsored adult education is now for the most part out of my reach (it’s expensive, at inconvenient times and inconvenient places) but t’interweb brings learning within my reach in every sense.

And the hoarding of learning doesn’t need any extra shelving!

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