Life a la carte

Whatever happened to ...

2008-09-16T11:15:00.000-07:00

I haven't been posting here because I opened a new Blogger account and started a new blog.

Some readers here have already figured this out, and it occurred to me that by not posting the info here it sort of seemed like y'all aren't welcome over there. And, really, you are welcome.

New blog at: Tales of Homeschooling

Work in Progress Wednesday

2008-07-30T06:26:00.000-07:00

My sore throat seems to come and go. The past couple of days have seen me mostly languishing, moaning and complaining (although in a whisper, since it hurt to talk).

Since I've been sitting around, I've spent some time knitting on the Aleita shell:

It would be done if the SciFi network had followed their schedule of showing reruns of Star Trek Enterprise on Tuesday night. I was all ready to hunker down for an evening of Star Trek, knitting and self pity (have I mentioned I had a sore throat?), but they were showing something else. Bah. I made jerky instead. Hey, that's something else that's in progress here today -- it's till dehydrating.

I began the week with good intentions to make a top for myself. This is how far I've gotten:

Kwik Sew 3199. I'll make the short sleeve version. Some day.

While I was finding the pattern to take this picture I discovered that I'd also purchased a dress pattern that I'd totally forgotten about. Which is sort of disturbing considering that I just purchased these patterns about 2 weeks ago. I really need to clean up all of this sewing mess and get a grip on what's in these piles. The situation is becoming critical. Also, I'm using the dining room as a sewing room, and we have company coming over -- the kind of company that involves using the dining room for pastimes like "eating" and "socializing" and exotic stuff like that.

Okay. I just ate some chopped up raw garlic stuck in a blob of Really Raw Honey. My throat is feeling better already! Perhaps because my body is in fear that I'm going to repeat that -- it was touch-and-go on whether I was going to keep it down, and my breath is startlingly strong now. I think I'm ready to tackle the day, finish up these projects, and move on with life.

Stuff

2008-07-28T08:00:00.000-07:00

Here's what I'm looking forward to this week: that it won't be last week. Not that last week was bad, but I'd rather cover some fresh ground, know what I mean?

Last week featured Vacation Bible School for Annabeth. I didn't help out with it, except that I did get her there early every day and then turned around almost immediately and picked her back up.

It also featured a trip for MrV which involved dropping him off and picking him up at various local airports since his travel plans are quirky that way. Not Scott AFB, though, in reference to Julie's comment.

The black linen blend capris are done. They are successful, other than the fact that I decided I hated all of the buttons I own and just sort of slapped a couple of dark ones on that don't particularly match the fabric. I think I've figured out how to stabilize the waistband on linen-blend enough that it doesn't stretch out hideously by the end of the day. Not that it matters, since the rest of the pants stretch out to Queen Baggy Bottom proportions by the end of the day (linen relaxes and streeeeeeetches as you wear it, if you have't worked with or worn it before, so even if the item fits like a glove at 7am it will be a totally different size, notably in the butt region, by 9pm).

Well, actually I don't know if they are truly successful. They fit nicely by the end of last week. I had spent several days not really eating last week, so I think I probably lost some weight. At the beginning of the week I had some stomach thing going -- I thought it was mild food poisoning (calling it "mild" since I didn't die from it, although I emptied out everything I'd consumed, if you know what I mean) but maybe it was a virus. And followed that with a gawdawful sore throat that made it painful to swallow (by Wednesday night after dance class when Thalia complained her feet hurt I replied, "I can't even FEEL my feet -- my head, throat and ears hurt so much I don't know if my feet even still exist." Then I went and put several blankets on the bed since I was FREEZING, crawled in, and just wallowed in pain until the fever broke and the headache went away. Although the sore throat still comes and goes.).

When not driving family members thither and yon, nor moaning in self-pity about my various ailments, I got back to work on Aleita shell:

I was zipping through this thing earlier in the month, then reached the point where I was supposed to divide for the armholes and Just. Didn't. Want. To. So I didn't -- I just let it sit for a week or so. This week I picked it up again and started working on the fronts. I think I've got about 3-5 rows to go, then I'll do the back, block, and be done. It's an easy knit, and fairly fun (except for binding off the armhole stitches, apparently). But mostly I want it done so I can enter the Ravelympics with a clear conscious and no UFO languishing in the corner.

And I didn't even try to knit during the An Samhra Feis this weekend. I've learned that I don't get much good knitting done at feiseanna. MrV, though, took his laptop and got tons of work done. We were there at 7am to start getting the girls ready. Thalia danced in an 8 hand, 4 hand, and 3 hand; Annabeth was in an 8 hand and a 3 hand. Figure dances started at 8am, and Thalia dearly wanted to review the 4 hand with her team, hence the early start.

Both Thalia and Annabeth danced 7 solo dances. Thalia had already placed in everything except Single Jig; she once again placed in everything except Single Jig. Sigh. Her Single Jig competition was a merged competition -- in other words, they put 2 age groups together. This was done because there weren't enough entrants; you need 5 dancers to compete in order to have results worth considering. Annabeth placed in Reel. She didn't melt down about not placing in anything else, thankfully. She has now placed in Reel, Treble Jig and Slip Jig in various feiseanna. Also, her 3 hand got a second place, beating other 3 hands with more experienced dancers, so that was an ego boost.

As for me, I helped out some with the Preliminary Champion stage. This was a whole new world for me, as I've never been in PC-land before. For the record, Preliminary Champions (PC) are competing to enter Open Champion (OC), which is the top of the heap. The stage is large, the musicians really good, they have 3 judges analyzing all of their moves. They dance 2 at a time. Each girl is dancing different choreography -- they are not synchronized in any way, each is simply dancing her school's dance. Each girl has her arms held down straight to her sides, her shoulders squared, her head and eyes always pointing straight ahead, her expression not wavering. They're zipping around the stage, zig zagging, kicking HARD (these kids have incredibly powerful legs since they can't use their arms for balance or propulsion), often nearly knocking into each other, but never acknowledging those near-misses with so much as a blink of an eye. It looked like a giant game of chicken! Except in sparkly outfits.

Overall it was an okay feis. There were a couple of places where we had to changes stages rather than just stay on the same stage for the entire day. The stage managers were nice about re-shuffling the order of the dances so competitors could make it from stage to stage. At one point an entire stage was moved in an attempt to speed things up; the stage managers were very diligent about trying to find a little girl who seemed to have gotten lost in the shuffle.

And this week? NO DANCE CLASSES! Can you believe it? It's almost like having a normal life.

Home Alone

2008-07-17T12:20:00.000-07:00

The kids have been gone all day every day this week, and I'm just now getting into the swing of being home alone. At the beginning of the week I was running errands and doing housework while they were gone. Today I just came home and started sewing, slapping together a sandwich when I was hungry, and eating it while reading the computer. The dishes are piled high, and I just got around to making the bed.

I have descended into sloth.

I wonder what would happen if they were gone all day every day all school year long. Sort of a frightening thought.

But I have accomplished something, you know. I have turned fabric into a wearable garment, which is always a nice feeling.

I was going to make another pair of pants, but was seized by the sudden desire to make a skirt. No problem -- I had purchased a floral print, lining, zipper and petersham last summer in order to make a multi-gored skirt from Ottobre. But, alas, no matter how I fussed at the pattern pieces, I couldn't get them all to fit on the fabric. Hmmm....

But, aha, plan B. I had purchased some fabric for a blouse several months ago. Before I started cutting into it, though, I paused. Mostly I paused because I realized that I couldn't find my tape measure, but it also gave me time to think, "If I make this particular blouse, what am I going to wear it with?" And realized that I wanted to wear it with black linen, either a skirt or pants.

So, how about another go round with that capri pattern I'm trying to perfect? Off I went to JoAnn's to see if there was any black linen-blend in their 60% off section. There was. I also picked up a new tape measure, although I suspect the old one is somewhere in Thalia's room.

And there, back over near the tape measures, I discovered that juvenile prints are currently 50% off. And some of these are really, really cute. So I piled a bunch in my cart, figuring I'd use them someday for ... something. Except this one:

I wanted for a skirt for me.

When I got home, Thalia wanted it, too. Too bad she wasn't here, and it's already sewn up in my size. Well, actually, we're about the same size. But that's beside the point. It's mine.

Pattern is Ottobre 5/2007, #4 (also #3, #9, and #18, depending on whether you cut it bias, add pockets, add a sash, etc.).

Alterations:
I made it in size 38, since hope springs eternal that the size charts will be absolutely correct. I ended up taking in .5 inch at each side seam after I'd finished.

Goofy thing that went wrong:
Once again, the zipper. It's an invisible zipper, and somehow after sewing in one side I flipped the skirt totally around before sewing the other side. Sort of like when you're doing circular knitting and the directions say be careful not to twist work when casting on. That's pretty much exactly what I did with the skirt. Not precisely a moebius (since there were still 2 sides and 2 edges), but something a bit along those lines.

Music I associate with this:
I had Bungle in the Jungle running through my head the entire time. MrV had asked if I remembered who performed it, and I couldn't get it out of my head after that. Also, the fabric has a sort of animal skin background. By the way, there's a nice Youtube video of Bungle in the Jungle with pictures of tigers -- just google it.

I tried to drown it out by listening to The Teaching Company lecture on The History of the United States by Prof. Allen C Guelzo, and made it all the way through the slave trade by the time I finished the hem. But, still, it's Bungle in the Jungle that I associate with this, even though certain specific areas of the skirt remind me of The Massachusetts Bay Company.

Preferred snack of this project::
I have this thing about eating or drinking while sewing. I just gotta. I think it's something along the line of chewing a pencil during a math test or chewing your lip while thinking. Anyway, I polished off quite a lot of blueberries.

Crazy Hair

2008-07-16T12:18:00.000-07:00

The kids are going to day camp this week. Each day has a theme. For example, today is Crazy Hair Day.

"I look like a Who."

I skipped my yoga session this morning to help with this. But, according to Those Who Know, it's all yoga, right? Everything we do is part of the Practice, be it doing asanas or spraying neurotoxins all over our kids' heads. Or something like that.

I'm sure this left a trail of red and blue all over the shirts and floors and pretty much anything else they were near.

I saw some of the other kids arriving. There were some pretty original ideas. I hope the leaders took group photos.

The camp is a dance camp. As to why we're doing a dance camp the week after the kids attended a dance workshop, well, ~~I am an idiot~~ we didn't know about the workshop when we signed up for a camp.

You may argue that every day is Crazy Hair Day in Irish Dance, what with those wigs. You're right. But somehow this was more fun.

Nachos

2008-07-14T09:43:00.001-07:00

We went to the Cardinals game the other evening. And Annabeth wanted to get nachos, so I went with her to get them.

On the way back to our seats I saw someone I sort of know, and stopped to chat for a minute. Except, gees, everyone in our section was yelling so loudly I could barely hear myself think, let alone carry on a conversation.

Annabeth and I got back to our seats, and I told MrV about our adventure.

Me: Oh, I saw so-and-so and he asked about yada yada yada ... hey, where'd you get the baseball?

MrV: I caught it.

Me: (Blank look while I absorb this information. How did he catch it? We are in the stands; the baseballs are down in the field. This does not make sense to me.)

MrV: When Pujols came up to bat I said, "He's gonna hit it up here and I'm gonna catch it," and that's what happened.

Me to Thalia: Did you see it?

Thalia: I ducked when I saw the ball coming.

For real he caught it. From the field to the stands.

The Eternal Search for Pants That Fit

2008-07-11T05:17:00.000-07:00

Now that the kids are done with the dance workshop you'd think they would eagerly jump into the opportunity to take pictures of me modeling sewing projects, but no. They're sleeping in and watching Leave It to Beaver. They didn't even bother going to the end-of-workshop pool party last night, citing extreme fatigue.

Which is all to say that I took pictures in the mirror again. The results were fuzzy. But they give a general idea of what I've been working on, which is pants.

Teri has assured me that if I ever get Ottobre pants to fit I will always be able to fit them, since Ottobre doesn't vary the fit, bless their souls. Last winter I worked on a pair of black dress pants which seemed to require acres of alterations and eventually got pitched. This summer I decided to try again, this time with a pattern for capris from issue 2/2007.

I started off by re-measuring myself, since I'm a growing girl (unfortunately in the wrong decades of life for that to be a compliment). The first thing I noticed is that I had cut out the winter pants in the wrong size, which would explain some of the problems I had with alterations. Doh. I'd made them a size too big.

So I thought, hey, why not simply try cutting the correct size and see how far off it is:

These are out of a linen blend on sale at JoAnn's. Not bad, but still very baggy at first. I ended up taking a half inch off of each side, pulling it in from the back so I wouldn't totally mess up the front pockets.

So I thought I'd try again, using more cheap linen blend. This time I figured I'd go down yet another size, since the next size down is a bit more than an inch smaller than the one I'd made, and that would match my alterations so far:

Whoops, too tight. But part of that was from totally blowing the fly front zipper. I'd decided that since I'd just done this exact pattern a couple of weeks ago I didn't need to look at the directions. Also, my method was sort of a mix of the Ottobre directions and Sandra Betzina's, neither of which I was terribly fond of. Which is to say, I had sort of winged it and it came out just fine the first time; the second time I wasn't so lucky. So after the pants were done I redid the zipper, reflecting on the fact that if nothing else I was getting pretty comfortable with deconstructing and reconstructing finished garments.

They're usable now. Particularly since my life seems to consist of 1) taking kids to dance classes, 2) going to the grocery, and 3) picking up books at the library.

I also left off the belt loops on the green pair, having decided that I'd never wear a belt with these anyway.

Thalia had been quite charmed with that green linen when I bought it. On the way to dance yesterday she got in the car and said, "My. Those are really green, aren't they." So I've apparently also facilitated a lesson in color choices. Thalia happens to have good color sense already, so I like to think something will come of this.

Next up, I have some stretch poplin that was on sale at Hancock's. And, yes, I have enough of it for the "outdoor pants" from issue 2/2007, which is pretty much the same pattern as this but with more length, some elastic business at the bottom of the legs, and some extra pockets. This time I'll leave more room in the hips, lengthen the crotch a tad (it wants to dip at the back waist), and find better directions for the fly front. I need to do something different with the back darts. The waist is still a bit big, and every version is saggy in the seat, as are many readymade pants I own -- snug in the hips, yet saggy bottomed. I"m pretty sure I can find an article or book that explains a "fix" for that, at least somewhat. Eventually I'll get it. Hope springs eternal, yes?

Knitting. Yawn.

2008-07-10T10:04:00.000-07:00

Ribbon Shell in Blue Sky Alapcas Dyed Cotton:

I cast this on because I was bored and I had the yarn and pattern.

I wasn't sure I'd like it. I kept saying I felt sort of tepid about it, and everyone who saw it said, "Oh, that's gonna be so cute!" (Note that by everyone I actually mean people hanging around the dance studio, since those are the only people I see. Really. We went to a Girl Scout event a couple of days ago, and I was sort of stunned to see so many people who aren't in Irish Dance and probably don't care about Irish Dance. Also, I had just about forgotten everyone's name, and couldn't rely on the Irish Dance choices of Mary, some form of Catherine, or Colleen as being "best guesses".)

I LOVE this yarn. So soft. So nice. I want to pinch its cheek and tickle its tummy.

The pattern? Eh, not so much. It's blocky and dumpy. Too heavy for hot weather, too skimpy for cooler weather. My theory is that everyone's thought that it was cute because of the model's shoes, which I wouldn't be caught dead in. Or maybe the extreme negative ease. I knit the smallest size, and it just doesn't fit me like the picture. I added length to the armholes, as they were way too tight, but I think they're still too tight for use as a vest. I crocheted around the neckline and armholes rather than picking up stitches and knitting -- at the front neckline it's a bit wonky, and needs to be tighter or else finessed with some elastic. The lower edge ribbing could also use some finesse and elastic.

Part of me wants to alter it by revamping the side seams using the serger, just to see what happens. But I'm not quite sure how my serger would handle this fabric. And then I wouldn't be able to reclaim the lovely yarn for a better project.

Wigs and Makeup

2008-07-09T06:03:00.000-07:00

Several people have commented on the wigs and makeup. Here's what I know about them. Bear in mind that I'm not an authority, so I may be dead wrong about this.

Curly hair is popular in Irish Dance. The head of our school points out that the curls bounce when you jump, so it looks really bouncy and like you're jumping really high when you've got a head full of curls. If you've been in dance or theater much you know it's all about the illusion, right?

I've read that the long curls became popular during the Shirley Temple era and never really went out of style. You can acheive them by rolling the hair on spikes. You put glop on each strand of hair, roll it up, and leave it for about 24 hours:

There are various ways of doing this. Some people go for fewer spikes, and then separate the big, fat curls out into several smaller curls once it's set. i imagine some people use faster drying hair products.

And a closer look:

As you can imagine, it's not that comfortable to sleep in. It takes at least an hour per head, so if you have multiple kids you will spend multiple hours doing this. It rules out going to a swimming pool to relax and cool off before a competition. If it rains on the way to the feis (competition) you're out of luck. Also, if you go to register for a feis the night before, and it involves walking through an Irish festival, you can pretty much expect drunks to want to poke your child's head in fascination. Plus, girls with short hair are pretty much out of the running for obtaining curls. So, for team competitions, it's easier to get a uniform look by having everyone wear wigs.

Some teams wear bun wigs -- they pull their hair up into a bun, and then just have a little curly hairpiece on that. The winning team in Annabeth's division chose this look. It was very nice and neat. Individual competitors will sometimes wear their hair "soft", which is to say that they don't go for the tight curls. Again, that's harder to do for a team, since we have kids with all sorts of day-to-day hair styles.

I've heard that there are rumbles about rules that young beginners should not be allowed to wear wigs to compete. I happen to disagree with that idea. As long as the curls are popular, you should be able to achieve them however you please. Of course, we could just ditch the entire idea of the curls, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. In the meantime, those in favor of ruling out wigs for young girls are welcome to take their spike-wearing daughters into a crowd of drunks and think about what the anti-wig rule accomplishes.

Currently there are rules in place that a young beginner cannot wear makeup, nor can she wear the glittery solo dresses. Annabeth was allowed to wear makeup for this event since it wasn't a local feis. She isn't allowed to for a regular competition. In the case of our team, the thought was that everyone should match, so one mom did all of the makeup. This was a good idea, since my own personal makeup kit is limited to mascara and chapstick. When they told me to go to the MAC counter to get the lipstick, etc., I was totally blank. Mac? Huh? "M-A-C, MAC, go to a department store like Macy's or Nordstroms." Each dancer on our team had her own lipstick, lipliner, eyeliner, and mascara. The woman in charge of the makeup provided the base, eye shadow and highlighter for Annabeth, having sensed, perhaps, that I was already way outside my have-a-clue zone.

Again, I don't think the winning team in Annabeth's division wore much (or maybe any) makeup. I don't know that they used tanner on their legs -- that's another thing. Young beginners cannot wear tanner in ordinary competition; but for this Annabeth had 3 layers of Boots self-tanner, along with a coating of Rimmel leg makeup, as did everyone else on the team. I was talking about the tanner to my hair guy, and he commented, "I'm Irish, and I know that the Irish don't tan. You're either pale white or else you're red with sunburn." Yeah, well. A lot of Irish dance has sort of diverged from the Irish roots. I mean, look at the solo dresses -- does anyone really walk around looking like that in Ireland? No.

Overall, Irish dance competitions have rules in place to keep the young beginners from going too overboard with the "look". In the beginning they concentrate on the dance. But at special competitions they can go for the look. And, as they get older and compete at higher levels they are welcome to pile on enough wigs, makeup, and bling to ~~look like the drag queen segment of a Gay Pride parade~~ , ~~look like a bunch of escaped circus clowns~~ satisfy their need to dress up whenever they compete.

I Got Tagged I Got Tagged I Got Tagged

2008-07-08T04:31:00.000-07:00

Staci at Writing and Living tagged me for a meme, which sent me into flashbacks of playing tag as a child. Was it better to be the kid everyone wanted to tag, or was it better to be the kid who was ignored? Oh, the politics of tag -- how did we survive it all?

She tagged me yesterday, but I thought I'd wait until today to answer because that way I'd have slept more and be more coherent. Great plan, but it didn't pan out since Thalia had dance class until 10:30, so we didn't get home until really late. So don't hold me to any of these answers, 'kay?

What was I doing 10 years ago?
Living in Dover, Delaware, and driving down to the beach every. single. weekend. Thalia was a toddler.

Five snacks I enjoy
Chocolate.
Cookies.
Snapea Crisps.
Toast.
Things involving peppermint.

Five things on my to-do list today
Take one or both kids to Reel/Treble Jig workshop.
Get everyone something to eat for lunch.
Go to Kit movie with Girl Scout troop.
Take Annabeth to ceili workshop.
Pick up Annabeth while dropping off Thalia for her ceili workshop.

Things I would do if I were a Billionaire
Tithe.
Replace the carpet here in the family room.
Hire a cat psychologist for Demon Kitty.
Buy really over-the-top Solo Dresses.

Five jobs I have had
Bookstore clerk.
Library clerk.
Librarian at law firm.
Interior landscaping.
General go-fer at landscaping firm.

Five of my Bad Habits
Cracking my toe knuckles.
Spending hours staring vacuously at the computer screen while surfing the Internet.
Running my fingers through my hair repeatedly, seeing if I can pull any hairs out.
Standing with my knees hyperextended.
Telling myself I'll floss "later".

Five places I have lived
Merrimack, NH
Millington, MD
Elkhart, IN
Evansville, IN
St. Louis, MO

Five random things about me
I have an acute sense of smell.
I think the concept of a grass lawn is overrated.
I like to kick my shoes off.
I can recite an amazing number of advertising jingles from the 1970s.
I'm too tired and vague to answer the part of this about what 5 people I'd like to know more about, probably because I'm nosy and don't want to limit it to 5 people. I think EVERYONE should answer these questions, and none of this namby-pamby "answer if you'd like" business either -- I think you should be forced to answer these questions so I can read what y'all write. After I take a nap, that is.

Our Experience at Nationals

2008-07-07T05:04:00.000-07:00

Annabeth's ceili team:

They didn't win their competition, BUT no one burst into tears, fell down, lost a shoe or wig during the performance, threw up, or otherwise fell apart during this very stressful event. So MrV and I considered that a "win". The team that got first place was breathtakingly good. Other teams were also very good. Some teams seemed worse than ours.

The upper 50 percent of the teams are given a recall, and their scores and places (first, second, third, etc.) are posted. The lower 50 percent of the competition are left with the illusion that they were the next best team. For example, 14 teams competed in the group that Annabeth's team was in; the top 7 know exactly how they scored. Teams that scored 8th through 14th place aren't posted, so every team can take heart and believe that really they were team number 8 (as opposed to getting last place, which would be icky). So. As far as I know, our team placed 8th, and we were only a point away from a recall. I love this scoring system.

The competition WAS nerve wracking -- up on top of a big stage in a big ballroom, with 3 judges analyzing every move, not to mention gobs of spectators.

The musicians were FANTASTIC. Gees, I felt like getting up on stage myself when I heard them play. Dean Crouch was on accordion. Someone said John Carey was in the audience (Thalia claimed she saw him walking around the hotel on Friday night, too).

The hotel itself -- Gaylord Opryland -- ummm. Well. I don't think we saw it at its best. The place was packed. Hundreds and hundreds of kids, most on a total adrenaline rush. Long lines for everything. It took an hour to check in. The swimming pools were crowded. Everything was crowded. And did I mention that all these swarms of people were totally wound up about the competition? Yowza, it was like nothing I've ever experienced before. I'm not sure it's something I ever want to experience again. Key learning: don't stay at the hotel that's hosting the event. Because even if it's huge and an amazing place, it's gonna be ... weird.

Anyway, overall it was a positive experience. And guess what we're doing today? Starting a dance workshop! I need to go sneak in a few hours of non-dance life before that starts ....

What's It All About

2008-07-02T04:46:00.000-07:00

At this time tomorrow we'll be headed to Nashville so Annabeth can dance this:

This isn't her team, but if you've seen one High Cauled Cap you've seen them all. Sort of. So, picture this with much shorter girls in poodle socks and stiffer dresses.

Must go finish sewing a pair of pants for me to wear, then clean the house and pack.

Shorts

2008-06-25T05:26:00.000-07:00

Here at The Home of Catchy Blog Post Titles, I've been sewing. Well, mostly I've been amassing fabric, thinking about sewing, and all that fun part of sewing. But I have been able to produce 2 pairs of shorts for Thalia:

from New Look 6354. Although she wanted them longer than the shorts they show on the pattern. The picture on the front of the pattern envelope is deceiving, by the way -- the inseam of the shorts really isn't very long. Pattern companies tend to make their illustrations very long and lean, have you noticed? Anyway, I drew a new length -- "drew" because I was tracing the pattern onto Pattern Ease. Pattern Ease is handy for messing around with patterns. It's sold at JoAnn's, and goes on sale when the interfacing is on sale, at which time I buy several yards.

Anyway, I made them about knee length. Also, she wanted a drawstring in the waist. After much discussion and pondering-of-options we ended up using double fold bias tape. I sewed it up so it wouldn't unfold (during which the needle fell out of the sewing machine and I put the new one in backwards, which, of course, means it won't sew right, which was about the time I started reconsidering my new plan to make the kids' Irish Dance solo dresses myself since I think you maybe need enough basic skill to put the flipping needle in correctly if you're going to attempt one of those).

The fabric is the linen blend that is on sale at JoAnn's for weeks at a time every spring. I also got enough to make a couple of pairs of capris for myself, but these will be a different pattern which will feature things like a zipper and pockets, which translates into "will take more than an hour to slap together".

Not exciting, groundbreaking sewing, but sometimes we just plod along making practical items for our families, building our skills. And sometimes the skills being built are as mundane as "able to trace patterns quickly" or "always remember to tighten needle screw better so needle doesn't fall out while sewing". Go forth and do likewise.

Attack of the Camera Gremlins

2008-06-20T06:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I took some pictures of yarn stash to put on Ravelry. Imagine my surprise when I downloaded the photos and discovered that instead of just the 2 I had taken, 60 photos were on the camera card.

Including such gems as

and

plus the profound, not to be missed

Ahem.

I still have more stash photos to take. I'm sort of afraid of what I might find when I download the next batch, as last night the camera gremlins discovered the joy and excitement of nighttime flash photography.

By the way, I'm organizing stash because I've decided to start knitting up all the summer yarn I have. On the way home from the Indy feis we were listening to a book on tape in the car, the sun was shining brightly, I was exhausted, I was about ready to start clawing my eyes out in order to stay awake and also just for something to do, and I thought, "I really need to knit something." So, since I'm not sure what I want to knit, I'm going to cast on for everything, since I figure that will up my odds of actually liking one of the items.

The Myth of the Long, Lazy Summer Day

2008-06-18T04:49:00.000-07:00

Yes, the days are long, but they seem to be spent in a frenzy of Getting Stuff Done.

My main occupation this week seems to be ferrying kids back and forth to dance class. It's time for some intense dance practice as we're getting ready for Nationals. At this point we've amassed most of our accoutrements -- MAC lipliner in the appropriate shade, Boots Bronzer in the appropriate shade, the correct wig, the Hullachan shoes (oops, still need a dress bag; add that to the list). Now we come to the home practice, like Getting the Wig On So It Looks Halfway Decent and Applying Bronzer And Seeing If Child Gets a Rash From It. And, of course, the dance classes.

Thalia and I were in the grocery yesterday (sale on popsicles! add that to the list -- we still have freezer room!) and were talking to another adult. The adult asked Thalia how old she is. Thalia replied "12", and I thought to myself, "Why didn't she say 'Under 13?'" because that's the age she is according to the Irish Dance world. And I realized that I was losing my ability to have a normal conversation, since normal people answer age questions with simple numbers like "12". Of course, the adult in question would've understood what was meant by "Under 13" because that woman has a daughter who dances in Open Champion, which is the upper echelon of competition and translates into "we have spent several years and thousands of dollars on this".

So, not only have I lost my ability to have a normal conversation, but it doesn't matter since the people I usually talk to understand this weird "code" I'm using. Isn't this a sign of belonging to a cult?

We had this notion of doing some school over the summer. Thalia is working on Analytical Grammar and Life Of Fred Algebra. Sometimes she also works on Latin. AnnaBeth is working on First Language Lessons 3 and also RightStart C. She is less enthused about the summer school concept. It really doesn't take long, and if we have other obligations during the week (like, say, 10-15 hours of dance classes) we don't bother. We're also continuing our read alouds, which are drawn from Ambleside Online Year 2 plus our continuing slog through Every Little House Book Ever Written Including Prequels And Sequels. I was working on Henle Latin, but it doesn't get done if I'm always driving or messing with wigs, plus, honestly, I don't think there are direct translations into Latin for things like jig, reel, and hornpipe, AND DOES ANYTHING ELSE REALLY MATTER?.

Thalia is also learning how to clicker train a cat, specifically Demon Kitty. Thalia is good at working with animals -- it's really neat to watch her, as a matter of fact. The training has only been going on for a couple of days. We hope to eventually train Demon Kitty to be less demonic. I was reading Karen Pryor's book on clicker training in which she tells about teaching her dog to not attack her cat. And, of course, I was attracted to the notion of "not attack the cat", and decided to see if we could teach Demon Kitty to remain calm around Wimp Cat. Expect blog posts.

We have made it to the pool, and even taken a (non-dancing) friend along. And we've had neighborhood kids hanging around our house (nothing like a freezer full of popsicles to make your house attractive on a hot day). Kids have stayed out late chasing fireflies, and have run through sprinklers. Really, I think the kids are having a great summer. I'm the one who wandering in a daze. But I'm thinking that isn't season-specific behavior on my part.

Indianapolis, I Love Your Feis

2008-06-16T05:38:00.001-07:00

Saturday found us at the Indianapolis Convention Center participating in the Indianapolis Feis. It is a very well organized, fun event.

The Convention Center is big enough to hold several stages and still have plenty of room for everyone to spread out, so that's how the feis was arranged. Each stage had some relatively comfy chairs to sit in for viewing the competition, but each stage also had plenty of empty room around it for competitors and families to spread out a blanket and dump all of their flotsam, such as dress bags, shoe bags, wig cases, American Girl dolls dressed in Irish Dance costumes, lucky stuffed animals, etc. etc.

AND, better yet, all of Thalia's dances were on a single stage, and all of AnnaBeth's dances were on a single stage. No moving around! No having to check 2 signs per child to see how each stage was moving! AND, extra special bonus, Thalia and Annabeth's stages were side by side. So I parked our stuff in the area between the 2 stages, and was actually able to watch both girls dance all of their dances. This has never happened before. It was so cool.

Actually, AnnaBeth ended up switching stages. Her stage was still slogging through dance after dance after dance, and another nearby stage was totally empty -- all dances were done. So, in a fit of flexibility and organization, the Powers That Be took a few groups over to the empty stage and had them compete there. PRESTO -- everyone gets done more quickly! Which was probably good, because AnnaBeth was starting to fall apart -- it was a long day. Her wig was starting to hurt her head, she hadn't eaten enough (although there was a nice selection of food vendors, plus we had brought some snacks -- she was simply too nervous and excited to eat).

Thalia placed in all of her dances, which is to say that she is now qualified to dance at Novice level because she got a 1st, 2nd or 3rd in everything she danced plus there were 5 or more competitors in each dance. Here are the goals Thalia had for Irish Dance as of about 2 weeks ago: "I'd like to make it into Novice, and I'd like to place 1st in something." Okay, CHECK THAT OFF! Both have been accomplished. She's worked hard, doing extra conditioning to help her technique. It's paid off.

Plus, super-duper bonus, she was a gracious winner. This was particularly important since AnnaBeth got a 3rd, then a bunch of 4ths and 5ths. AnnaBeth had a bit of a meltdown over that; we have had several talks about how it's pretty good to get 4th place out of 2 dozen competitors, even if 4th place doesn't put you into Novice.

NOTES TO SELF THAT WON'T NECESSARILY MAKE SENSE TO ANYONE ELSE:

The competition started at 9am. First Feis rotated with Beginner 1, neither of which had a hard shoe category. Beginner 2 rotated with Novice and Open. We ended up being there until about 3pm. Next year take chairs to put in camping area, plus something to wear at lunch time.

We will be returning next year. It was a fantastic feis.

The Exploding Cat

2008-06-06T05:35:00.001-07:00

Lat night Demon Kitty was staring out the sliding glass door. I went over to pick her up, and she exploded into a ball of fur and claws and yowling. I screamed. I bled. I threw her in the basement.

This morning she was her usual loving, cute, cuddly self.

We think she was concentrating so much on something outside the door (probably our other cat) that she was totally taken by surprise when i touched her. And now I have scratches down the side of my face and also my arm. I also have blood splashed on the top I was wearing (the kids had a piano recital earlier in the evening, so I was sort of dressed up). I always end up with blood dripped on my favorite tops. Sigh.

I also have a prescription for anti-anxiety drugs for Demon Kitty. We're hoping they "take the edge off", as the vet says.

Anyway, that pretty much took my mind off of everything else. And there's a lot of "everything else" these days. The car was dying, but has revived after tender ministrations (and several one-car-family days). We seem to be unable to get the proper shoes in the proper size and the proper wig for Annabeth's Big Dance Competition coming up in just a few more weeks. It's raining constantly, meaning the water table has risen to the point that sump pumps that NEVER run are merrily pumping water, and those of us without sump pumps have plans to install one soon. Sometimes the storms feature bonus tornado warnings, which adds to the excitement. And can you believe how hot it is for the beginning of June? Yowza, it feels more like July or August.

Long Weekend

2008-05-27T05:43:00.000-07:00

Or, "what we did on Memorial Day vacation":

I went to the library to get books on cat psychology (still dealing with Demon Kitty, who must be separated from Wimpy Cat at all times). While there I happened to pick up Carolyn Jessop's book, Escape, about her life in the FLDS. Brought it home and read it obsessively. Finished it with a feeling of, "okay, THAT'S out of the way." I rarely read popular books, so it will probably be a long time before I read something else trendy.

We all went to see Prince Caspian. The theater was fairly empty, which was good since we had to whisper about what was in the book or not. Some of us also had to giggle quite a bit about the whole Caspian-Susan relationship (which is NOT in the book).

MrV and Thalia painted Thalia's room. MrV also put up another shelf in Annabeth's closet. And cleaned out the icky gutters way way up high.

Took Annabeth to a birthday party. In the meantime, bought one of those firepit thingies that let you have a fire on your porch. Picked up Annabeth from party, stayed up very late having a fire on porch. Ignored inserted literature stating that we would likely die if we ate food cooked on firepit thingy, and recklessly toasted marshmallows.

Endured an amazing amount of rain. When you walk through our yard the mud about sucks your feet off. A colony of ants decided our house would be drier and better to live in. We found the point where they're coming in on the inside of the house, but can't find it on the outside -- I imagine it's under the porch somewhere. In the meantime, I've closed up their inside doorway with Borax. Yes, they can dig through, but it will kill them over time.

I managed to get some sewing done, this time on a pair of capri pants. Each change of season brings a crisis in my wardrobe. Apparently sometime between last summer and now I went through my clothing and threw out all my ugliest capri pants; this left me with pretty much nothing to wear. Oops. I'm sure at the time I had visions of shopping for new. Hah. You'd think I'd know better by now -- I hate to shop. Anyway, the fly front zipper is in, and I need to make belt loops, attach the waistband, and hem them. Which I should be doing now, come to think of it ....

Bronze Award Project

2008-05-21T11:31:00.000-07:00

Thalia decided to earn her Bronze Award while in Junior Girl Scouts this year. The Bronze Award is the highest award given to a Junior Scout.

To earn it she needed to earn a Sign, a leadership award, and 2 badges related to her project. She then needed to spend 15 hours on a project that would benefit the community.

Thalia decided to earn the Sign of the Star, mostly because it was fairly easy to earn solo (the Bronze Award and Signs are often earned as a troop).

She had earned the Junior Aid award back in Ohio when she helped run a Brownie meeting.

The two badges she earned were Pet Care, and Yarn and Fabric Arts.

Then she was ready to start her project -- making blankets for cats in shelters. She would've preferred to actually work directly with the animals, but is too young to do so. I thought this was sort of creative in that she came up with a way to do something for the animals in spite of her youth.

She ended up making fleece blankets -- the kind that take 2 layers of fleece with fringes tied together. The shelter specified that they would like the blankets to be 14 inches square. Frankly, this was the toughest part of the entire project -- getting the specifications for the blankets. During this part of the project Thalia learned that nonprofit organizations are often understaffed and may not return phone calls until you call them several times.

We had the fleece with multi-colored cats on it already (I had bought it when Thalia was a toddler, thinking I would make a jacket for her). We waited for a sale at JoAnn's to get some solids for $2.99 per yard, and also found some large pieces for cheap in the remnant bin. We're all about the cheap materials here.

She ended up making 14 blankets. Our cats tested them out, and thought they were great. For the record, after we finally got the cats off of them she washed the blankets before actually taking them to the shelter.

At the end of the year her troop had a candle ceremony for the 3 girls who had earned their Bronze Award. And the leader mentioned it, then, in the Court of Awards that was held jointly with the Brownies and Cadettes -- the leader thinks Girl Scouts needs to make more of a fuss about the Bronze, Silver, and Gold Awards. But, hey, if we started counting the ways Girl Scouts could be better we'd be here all day, right? So let's be happy we had a nice troop in a decent Council.

Thalia has now officially bridged to Cadettes, so we're poised to start on the Silver Award. Yeehaw. Or maybe "aaack" would be more appropriate. I feel like I just figured out how to "do" Juniors, and now it all changes.

Busy Times

2008-05-20T05:31:00.000-07:00

We've had house guests. So that's part of the reason for the break in blogging.

Also, we got a new cat a few weeks ago. After spending several weeks wrapping us around her little paw, when she was sure of our adoration, she revealed her true identity of Demon Kitty. She attacked our other cat. Viciously. So, much time lately has been spent toting cats to the vet. Older cat now gets ointment in his eye and antibiotics. Demon Kitty has been checked out for any physical problems -- there are none, by the way, so that means she has no excuse for her behavior.

In Which I Find Something Worthwhile About Prima Latina

2008-05-05T06:32:00.000-07:00

I have often moaned and complained about Latina Christiana and Prima Latina, all volumes of which we tossed out in favor of other Latin programs that didn't cause such weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

BUT

Thalia's choir was singing in a concert. And it was pretty cool when AnnaBeth and I recognized the song:

Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus
Dominus Deus Sabbaoth.
Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloria Tua.
Hosanna in excelsis.
Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini.
Hosanna in excelsis.

We sort of giggled and chanted along quietly.

Afterwards I said something to Thalia about how handy it was that she already knew the words to that one.

"Yeah, and we'd even learned the correct pronunciation.' It was pretty apparent from the tone of her voice that this did NOT mean that she had any desire whatsoever to touch those books again. Additionally, she's into classical pronunciation now, thank you very much.

But, hey, at least all those weeks of Prima Latina weren't a total waste.

Trivia

2008-05-02T07:51:00.000-07:00

So far today I've gotten up early, had some Green Magma to drink, then scrubbed the kitchen floor while listening to classical music.

After that I ate pecan shortbread chocolate chunk cookies, fried bacon, ate the bacon, fried bread in the bacon grease, then ate that, all while mindlessly reading Internet forums.

Which way will the day go -- back on track for the healthy, productive lifestyle? Or diving further into the depths of junk food and drivel?

Ruffles, and Red, White and Blue

2008-04-30T12:04:00.001-07:00

AnnaBeth's choir director asked that they wear red, white and blue to their next performance. Well, okay. Except that the only red clothing she has is Christmas related, and it's (finally) too warm for that sort of thing. And the only blue she has is denim, which really isn't so much "blue" as it is "denim".

So we decided to make a new skirt. And I figured that AnnaBeth wanted something a little flouncier than an A-line or simple gathered skirt. After much consultation she decided she liked Ottobre 3/2006 #35, which is an extravaganza of ruffles. She thought perhaps we should make some ruffles blue and some red, but I thought it might be nice to find some printed fabric.

A trip to JoAnn's yielded patriotic Hello Kitty (who knew?), as well as some white fabric with stars sprinkled across it.

This is what happens when you cross a need for red, white, and blue with a need for lots of frills:

I had purchased some red ribbon to sew on some of the outer, blue ruffles, but AnnaBeth decided against that. I think she was right, since that would've added too much weight to those ruffles.

This really weighs a ton -- it's got 2 layers. The under skirt is supposed to be white batiste with 2 frills on the bottom. I used white for the upper part, but the starry fabric for the frills. I hemmed the frills with my serger set for a narrow rolled hem, one using red thread and the other using blue. It came out looking sort of like ribbons:

That white fabric was stuffed in a drawer with a price tag of 47 cents per yard. I think it originally belonged to my mother-in-law's mother, who had purchased it way back when. You know, back before we called it "stash" and instead called it "sort of odd hoarding behavior, possibly brought on by surviving the Great Depression".

I'd thought I was being clever by ignoring Ottobre's directions about the size of the elastic in the waist -- I thought they wanted it way too small. But, no, they were right -- the skirt is so heavy that it drags right down onto her hips. But it seems to work in spite of my larger elastic.

I finished it this morning. She's worn in non-stop today. I hope it lasts until her performance, and doesn't end up mud caked or ripped by then.

"Stitch It Together" Try-It for Brownies

2008-04-28T05:54:00.000-07:00

Honestly, this would've been an easier Try-It for us to do at home, but that can't be said for everyone in AnnaBeth's Brownie troop. So, it ended up as a troop project. The girls made doll quilts.

We were instructed to get fabric and cut out 6 squares of 8" by 8", and a backing of 16" by 24" (yes, quick math show that this isn't really correct, as you have seam allowances, but I guess the woman in charge decided it was the easiest way to explain it to everyone, or maybe she didn't feel like doing the math herself -- I never know in these situations). We also purchased some buttons.

Those who were unable to purchase their own fabric had some provided for them.

We happened into a sale at JoAnn's on quilting fabric and buttons.

(Picture is yellow because it was taken on the dining room table in winter.)

At the meetings the girls sewed on the buttons on one square (task #2, Button Collage) and embroidered designs on another square or 2 (task #3, Embroidery). Did I mention that there are about 20 girls in our troop? So, that's 20 kids in 1st through 3rd grade who are trying to figure out how to sew on buttons and how to embroider (and we didn't have hoops, which added to the challenge). And, yeah, we have heavy parental involvement, but an amazing number of the parents have little idea how to sew on a button or how to embroider. It was ... intense. The troop provided the needles, thrjead, scissors, and embroidery floss (I think the floss was donated by someone who had gobs of DMC that the labels had fallen off of; actually, AnnaBeth took some of our from home so she knew she had a color she liked).

After decorating some of the squares with buttons and embroidery, the girls brought all 6 squares to the sewing machines. What sewing machines? Why, the ones lugged in by some of the moms. I took my old Viking, which is absolutely awesome for this task since it has a "low gear" in which you CANNOT sew quickly no matter how much you stomp on the pedal (another plus is its nice carrying case, but a minus is that it weighs about as much as my car). Working closely with the sewing machine mavens, each girl sewed together at least some of her squares. Well, if she wanted to. If she was really timid, she was welcome to just watch while being talked through what was going on. At least, the kids who were with me got talked through it -- my experience teaching Thalia and AnnaBeth to sew merged with my years of library reference work teaching university freshmen how to use the online card catalog, and I was in the ZONE about explaining what we were doing and why. (task #6, Patch It All Together) The seams were ironed flat by the adults; someone had brought in an iron, and a little ironing station was set up.

The troop provided batting. The completed 6 squares were laid on top of the batting and the backing, and sewn together (sometimes by Brownies, sometimes not) leaving a gap for turning. All quilts were turned, and the girls were given needles and thread to whip the gap closed (task #5, Sew What?)

Okay, admittedly some of these tasks aren't spot on how they're written in the Try-It book, but we took at least 3 meetings to do this, and the kids really did work quite a bit on stitching skills.

A finished product.

Thalia thought it was such a cool concept that she got some fabric to make one, too.

And One Finished for Me

2008-04-23T05:23:00.000-07:00

Long ago I became interested in A Thomas Jefferson Education by Oliver Van DeMille. I found the online discussion of the book tantalizing. A new look at homeschooling! Woohoo! It sounded like it was changing lives.

But, of course, I was too cheap to actually purchase a copy of the book. I found out what I could about the contents and the author, and had to be satisfied with that.

A few weeks ago I happened to look up Thomas Jefferson Education in our library's catalog. Hey, they had it! I placed a hold, and eagerly awaited its arrival.

And last week it finally came! And I got to read it! And it was ... really mediocre. Sigh. All my hopes for revolutionary thought were dashed. It was nothing new, packaged in a book that seemed like a cross between an extremely long magazine article, and a brochure for George Wythe College, which is the non-accredited school the author runs.

So. Set a good example for your kids by studying and learning new things. Classics are good. not that he ever defines what he means by classics. Mentors are good. Apparently we should all strive to become statesmen, although I don't recall that he ever explained what that meant, either. George Wythe College is (according to DeMille) a sparkling example of higher education.

I did get a kick out of this quote from page 125: "We are inundated with information, but most of it does us very little good." Umm, yep, that pretty much sums up my thoughts on this book.

Another One Bites the Dust

2008-04-22T06:25:00.000-07:00

I will never again teach First Language Lessons.

It's done. Finished. History.

Two kids worth of use, and it's looking rather battered. The protective coating is peeling right off of the cover. It has that look that a book gets when it's pulled off and replaced on a shelf a couple hundred times.

I'll admit that it's been incredibly boring at times. For some reason, it didn't seem quite so bad the second time through, though. Perhaps that's because I knew what to expect. Perhaps it's because I didn't have a toddler demanding my attention, leaving me feeling frazzled about getting through all the lessons in the shortest time possible.

We added Montessori grammar games. We made the chants into hand clap games and dances. We skipped lessons, particularly at the beginning. We sang the poems for which we knew a tune (All Things Beautiful, for example).

Overall, I've decided that I like slightly scripted lessons. They're a nice change of pace. When I'm feeling crummy I can follow the script, but when I'm perky I can go off in my own direction.

For the record, I think the book's cover picture is weird. I'll not be missing that at all.

Homeschool Snapshot

2008-04-16T05:09:00.000-07:00

MATH

Thalia decided she needed to work on fractions, percents, and decimals before moving into a pre-Algebra program. We got the Key to. ... series for her to work on, and she's been going through the books on her own. She likes the incremental pace; I think she also gets a kick out of how easy some of it is. I don't think she's learning anything new, but she's getting plenty of practice on concepts. RightStart was great on explanations, and then gave just a few interesting problems to work on -- Thalia apparently needed gobs of practice problems, which she's getting now.

In the meantime, I've been looking over pre-Algebra programs, and have decided that some of the main features of them are working on fractions, decimals, and percents, and making sure those are solid before moving on to Algebra. I think we'll plunge into Algebra once she's done with these books.

AnnaBeth continues in RightStart C. We are at about lesson 95. She's doing well with memorizing multiplication tables. Not that RightStart calls it that -- at this point she's just learning to skip count really, really quickly, according to the program. She's working on 4 digit subtraction, which seems to be going smoothly.

Latin

Thalia continues with Latin for Children, which she adores. She eagerly awaits Greek for Children, convinced that the people at Classical Academic Press will put together the Best Program Ever since they have the magic touch in language programs.

AnnaBeth was doing Prima Latina, but ... oh, lordy, those Memoria Press language programs just kill me. I dread getting out the book. And AnnaBeth wasn't exactly pushing for it. At first she was so eager to learn Latin that she insisted, and I just sort of went along with her enthusiasm. But bit by bit that enthusiasm eroded with the onslaught of B.O.R.I.N.G. lessons. Latin seems to be on hold for this child for a few more weeks.

Foreign Language

Thalia also continues in Rosetta Stone Spanish. She's bored with it. I've been looking for something else to mix it with, but so far haven't found anything that seems appropriate. What she'd really like if Spanish for Children by Classical Academic Press, since she considers them the source of all Perfect Language Programs. Maybe we'll take a look at it when it's published.

AnnaBeth is taking another try at French. A couple of years ago we tried The Easy French. Since she didn't yet know how to read we simply listened to the tapes. Not much stuck, frankly. We just started the program again, this time with reading and writing. AnnaBeth is excited about this. I'll be interested to see how well we learn to read French with the little Spalding-type phonogram cards they provide.

Reading and Writing

We just got our copy of Lightning Literature 7 last week, and Thalia immediately started in. I got a copy of the Harold Bloom's book Stories and Poems for Extremely Intelligent Children from the library so she could read Riki Tiki Tavi. She keeps taking the book and wandering off with it, reading other things. Sheesh, that child loves to read. She also likes Lightning Lit, it seems. I think she likes having a mental checklist of what all needs to be covered, and being able to see how she's progressing; having a workbook provides that.

Analytical Grammar is on order. Right now she's not doing any other grammar program; way back when we dumped Rod and Staff 5th grade and never replaced it with anything. It's time to focus on grammar again. Simply doing dictation and looking up rules as needed really didn't seem to help with usage rules, either. I think Analytical Grammar gets into some usage. I hope so. We'll see.

In the meantime, AnnaBeth is 4 lessons away from completing First Language Lessons. She's very excited. We already have a copy of the Level 3 book and workbook ready to start next week. And she's very excited about that, too. Yes, both my kids are excited that their new programs contain workbooks.

AnnaBeth also is working on cursive in the Handwriting Without Tears workbook, which she really enjoys. She does this pretty much on her own. Every so often I'm supposed to come up with a list of words for her to write in cursive. That's pretty much the extent of my involvement.

No one works on spelling on a regular basis.

We are in the final week of Ambleside Year 1, which we've been using for read alouds. We continue to slog through all of the LIttle House books. We are currently in The Long Winter, with its continuous blizzards and continuous discussion of whether or not the train can make it through the Tracy Cut. Why did these people ever move from The Big Woods? Life was good back in The Big Woods; they should've stayed there.

Science

Science is a motley assortment of classes at the Science Center, the zoo, and Girl Scout badge work. We're trying to come up with something more systematic for next year for Thalia. She'll be too old for Science Center classes, and the Cadette Interest Projects aren't so science-y (insert snide comment here about how Girl Scouts comes up with what to put in their books -- use your imagination). So. Middle School science -- the bane of so many homeschoolers. Umm. Well. Ahem. Moving on.

History

Let's just call our history program "interest led". "Erratic" would also be a good word to use. Thalia is interested in Greeks and Vikings. AnnaBeth is interested in Egyptians. So sometimes we read about these things, or listen to audio books, or watch programs about them. And sometimes we don't. Okay, moving on.

Oh! Wait! Those Ambleside readings have a bunch of history! Okay, then, we've been doing history of Britain, as well as some Vikings and some early Christian church.

Other Stuff

Piano. We have an excellent piano teacher. The kids are learning so much from her. Heck, I am learning so much from her.

Phys Ed. Last week feature workshops with John Carey. Who'd've thought we'd be doing workshops with a World Champion who starred in Lord of the Dance. Irish Dance is so weird. AnnaBeth also continues to work her way through the YMCA swimming program.

Hmm, I think that's what we do for homeschool these days. It's hard to say -- the homeschool stuff is so embedded in life that you can't really say "okay this is school" and "this over here is just living our lives". But these are the things I keep track of in our notebooks in order to comply with Missouri homeschool law.

The Little Sock That Nobody Loved

2008-04-07T05:24:00.001-07:00

In February I cast on a sock for MrV, using KnitPicks Shine in Cocoa and Yarn Harlot's Earl Grey Pattern. At first it was fun -- the yarn is a wonderful chocolate brown, the pattern is easy, the knitting just flowed along.

Then March came, Gloomy, wet, cold March. Life revolved around delivering Girl Scout cookies (in snow, rain, and cold) and schlepping kids to dance classes and performances (in rain and cold). We had to put one of our cats down. I got sick. March tried to suck away my will to live. It succeeded in sucking away my will to knit.

But April eventually arrived, and I made it to the toe of the sock:

Before I grafted the toe I had MrV try it on.

Question 1: "What am I going to wear these with?" Uh, I thought the brown would go with those brown pants you really like. But, honestly, now that it's knit up I don't much like how it looks with the pant fabric.

Question 2: "They seem sort of short in the cuff. Can you make this part longer?" Now, these socks were knit from the cuff down. I have several thoughts swimming through my head at this point. One is that I think knitting socks from the cuff down is stupid, I'm not sure why I did it, and the fact that MrV wants me to add to the cuff proves that every knitter who gets sucked into this method is an idiot. But, let's face it, everyone knows that I would have no problems with the concept of cutting off the ribbing of the cuff, putting the stitches on needles, and knitting up to make the cuff longer. Then again, I really don't like this sock, loaded as it is with memories of gloomy, cold, wet March. And, finally, there isn't enough yarn to make this cut-and-knit-the-other-way worthwhile. So I answer, "No." I tell him they are knit from the cuff down, and imply that is the fault of the universal obsession with knitting socks from the cuff down that is the problem.

Question 3: "Are you mad that I don't like them?" No, I'm grateful I found out before I knit the second sock. If I'd knit both sock and then watched them languish, then I'd be upset. Particularly because I don't especially like this sock, either.

So, what to do with the rest of the yarn? What to cast on next, to wipe away the bad taste of this sock? Alas, I have no time to play around with yarn. I'm schlepping kids to special dance workshops taught by Mr. Famous Dancer every. single. day. And doing the laundry associated with all of this dancing.

But today is a bright and sunny day, the dance workshop will be over in a few more days, and I have a box of bamboo yarn to play with. Life moves on, better than before. It just doesn't move on wearing this sock, which shall be frogged.

Theater Badge

2008-04-02T05:42:00.001-07:00

I ended up being in charge of the Theater Badge for Thalia's Junior Girl Scout troop this spring.

I looked into taking the troop on a field trip to a theater department in a high school or at the YMCA in west county, but the trips didn't really sound all that exciting for the amount of time, trouble, and money to get the kids to the place. Also, Thalia pointed out that this crowd really likes to do crafts, and thought we should make sure we had a chance to make masks (option 1 in the badge book).

So we ended up doing the badge at our usual meeting site, which meant that I actually had to be in charge of everything. Me, leading theater exercises? Actually, it turned out fine -- this is a great group of girls.

We used the theater exercises in the badge book -- Mirror Mimic, Character Charades, Belt it Out, and How You Say It (I modified this to be a Sentence Game). I mixed in some other theater games like Zip Zap Zop and Human Orchestra. I got a lot of ideas from the book On Stage: Theatre Games and Activities for Kids.

Next up we worked on the Mix It Up, Make It Up activity of the badge. This is a costuming activity. I had brought a couple of big bags of cloth -- sheets, capes, old curtains, fabric remnants -- as well as belts, a huge bag of safety pins, and other costume-y odds and ends. I announced that we were going to play Project Runway -- working in pairs, they were to design a costume for a fairy tale, then have one person of the pair walk it down the "runway" while the other described what the character was. I assigned the pairs (on advice from Thalia), and the girls got to work. There was much giggling, and some very creative outfits were produced. The teams switched roles, then, for another go at the runway.

Finally, the moment we had all been waiting for -- I passed out the paper plates and announced that we were making masks. Aside from the usual markers, glue sticks, construction paper, tape and yarn, I had raided our home craft supplies to come up with feathers, crepe paper streamers, sequins, pipe cleaners, and random shapes cut from foam sheets (I really don't know why we own some of this stuff, which represents several years of accumulation).

The girls cut holes in the masks for their eyes, I tied yarn on the sides so they could tie the masks onto their heads, and they all started creating.

These are just the ones from Thalia and AnnaBeth (who had tagged along). The group had an amazing assortment -- they showed fantastic creativity. We had a bird, a Yeti, a Greek mask representing Dionysius. Some girls worked the entire time on one mask; others finished quickly, and I suggested they make another.

Once all of the masks were finished we sat in a circle and they introduced their masks -- they put them on, and acted like the character of the mask.

Overall I thought it was a pretty successful meeting.

Current Events at Our House

2008-03-17T09:43:00.001-07:00

This is how it goes:

Dance performance
Dance performance
Ceili class
Dance class
Ceili class
(day off)
Dance performance
Parade
Dance performance
Dance performance
Dance performance
Dance performance

We are currently sitting around watching television like total slugs, having skipped the performance we could be at right this very minute. And we're also skipping the one after that. Ssshhhh, don't tell. It's starting to feel like we're in a cult -- total lack of sleep coupled with doing the same thing over and over and over again.

Still to come:

Dance performance
Ceili class
Dance class
Ceili class

Then I think something else happens, like, oh, that's right, Easter. That holiday for which we have no shoes or clothing or Easter-basket-stuff.

Yes, We're Still Here

2008-03-03T05:23:00.001-08:00

Most of the Girl Scout cookies have been delivered. For the record, the kids sold pretty much every single box themselves -- we don't do the "parents take sales sheet to work and post it" thing. The kids went door to door to door. The only exceptions were the person who cuts MrV's hair (2 boxes) and a couple of people at church who had the form passed to them (8 boxes).

So we've been schlepping these cookies door to door to door. I think we have less than 10 houses to go now.

Right now I'm passing the time until the vet's office opens. The cat is sick. She didn't eat yesterday, which was worrisome, but, okay, sometimes cats do that. By 6am today, though, she seemed very, very weak. I'm mostly trying to distract myself for another 45 minutes or so until the vet's office opens; every so often I go look to see if she's still breathing.

Okay, I just checked, and she's still alive. So, I cried a little, and tried to think of something else I can do to pass the time.

Gotta go.

Welcome to My Nightmare

2008-02-25T06:01:00.000-08:00

320 boxes of Girl Scout cookies. To be delivered to about 150 different houses.

Oh the Weather Outside Is Frightful

2008-02-21T05:06:00.000-08:00

But the cables are so delightful:

Sleet and freezing rain, the local schools are closing, our Girls Scout meeting has been cancelled (we still have to pick up over 300 boxes of cookies for delivery, but that's a problem for another day).

We have already brought firewood into the (attached) garage, since all this time reading Little House has taught us something.

And I am prepared to continue my cable obsession, which started with Twist.

This time I'm making a headband for one of the kids, using a pattern she selected from Elsebeth Lavold's Viking Patterns for Knitting. The white yarn is a provisional cast on; when I'm done I'll graft the 2 ends together to make a ring. Then I'll start another headband for the other child, using a different pattern.

This is the first time I've used this book, which I've had for 3 or 4 years. I was intimidated by the charts -- Lavold writes them a bit differently than the cable charts I'm used to. This time, though, I simply plunged in, got it wrong, ripped it out, tried again using the photograph as reference, ripped it out another time or 2, and now am happily working away. There's an explanation of how to use the charts in the book, of course, but that would've taken 5 minutes to read; I much prefer my helter-skelter method of beginning the project immediately, then taking an hour or so to fiddle with it since I was unprepared.

I rarely make gauge swatches, as you could probably guess.

Okay, I made and washed and blocked a gauge swatch for Twist, but my main thought upon doing it was " Gees, I'm really losing my edge," since it's so much more exciting to spend hours and hours making a sweater with only the vaguest idea of whether you're making it the right size. Making the swatch first just seemed so ... safe. When Twist turned out great it wasn't a surprise -- it was a great pattern made in the proper size, ho hum, yawn, of course it looks nice.

Favorite Twist anecdote: I knit on Twist quite a bit a dance class while talking to other moms. And last night I was at dance class knitting away on this headband, and got the question, "Whatever happened to that sweater you were knitting -- did you finish it?" "I'm wearing it now." Jaws drop, gasps. "THAT'S IT?" Then 10 minutes later someone else walks in, says, "Oh, what are you making now? Did you finish that sweater?" etc., etc. I assume they weren't expecting the final product to look so ... I don't know ... wearable.

Me plus Twist equals Love

2008-02-18T09:47:00.000-08:00

Finished product:

I love this sweater. I loved knitting it. I love wearing it. I'm wearing it now.

(Not my favorite photo, though, but the one Blogger would accept. Blogger and I have a very tenuous relationship, you know. But you'd think I could've gotten a better photo considering that I wore the sweater all day Sunday and all day Monday.)

Twist by Bonne Marie Burns, knit out of Cascade Superwash in offwhite, on sizes 5 and 6 needles. I cast on a couple of extra stitches in the back, an extra stitch on each side, and 2 more stitches on each sleeve to make up for the fact that my gauge was a bit off. And, no, I didn't worry about what happened when I bound those stitches back off at the top of the pieces -- I figured that the knitted fabric could be eased to fit (that's the seamstress in me -- you can cut out fabric a bit wonky and still sew it together okay).

I loved this pattern so much that it didn't bother me that I had to knit the left front nearly 3 times before I got the cables right. Well, it didn't bother me much.

And I was pleased to have it done on Saturday night, because

Knit Picks clearanced a bunch of yarn out of their shop right onto my doorstep Saturday afternoon.

The hat in the top photo is already done; socks have been cast on in the cocoa brown Essential ... oooh, I'm feeling productive these days! Except not so productive in the bathroom-cleaning department, sigh....

Saturday

2008-02-18T04:55:00.001-08:00

"What did you do this weekend?"

Oh, I'm so glad you asked.

Saturday we got up early, loaded dance paraphernalia into the car, and headed to the Ballpark Hilton for a day of feising at the Irish Arts Feis. MrV dropped us off at the door, and then drove off to find parking (since the valet parking was not only expensive, but also full; he eventually found a spot on the street a few blocks away; at least it wasn't as bad as last year when there were mounds of snow all over and virtually no parking anyway since the feis was on the same weekend as the Mardi Gras parade -- did you know the St. Louis Mardi Gras parade is the 2nd largest in the US? So, anyway, immediate grumpiness about the feis before we've even begun, due to crummy parking situation).

We went on in and I purchased a wristband, since this feis requires ALL non-dancers to pay $10 to watch the dancers. The dancers, of course, have paid $8 per dance to compete. The rest of us -- family, friends, curious people wandering by who wonder what an Irish dance competition looks like -- must each pay $10. Even the little 3 month old baby needs to pay for a wristband. Other feisanna in St. Louis don't do this -- you pay a flat fee online (maybe $10-$15 per family) for which you can bring every relative you have plus your entire neighborhood. So, second instance of grumpiness, and we haven't even gotten to our stages.

We had scoped out the hotel the night before. The place is rather choppy, and currently worse due to some massive construction project. The feis volunteers had some confusing signs up as to where the various stages were, although that wasn't really their fault. It was impossible to NOT be confusing under the circumstances. And they tried to amend signs as they observed people wandering off in the wrong directions. Overall, I was glad I knew where to deposit the kids' dance bags.

Kid1 danced on stages 1 and 2, which were located in the same ballroom. Yay for not having to switch rooms. But the signs on the stages listing which dance competed when were rather tiny and poorly lit. Kid1 had some moments of panic when she realized she couldn't read them since she's nearsighted.

Kid2 was on stages 5 and 6 -- again, both in the same ballroom. Except you can't see the signs for who's "up" on stage 5 when you're at stage 6, and vice versa, which was a little annoying (I live in fear of totally missing a dance because we weren't paying attention).

Stages 1 and 2 started promptly at 8:30 with the singing of national anthems. They moved on to figure dances. Then ... stopped. Because all the figure dances have to be done on all stages before they can start the solo dances. So they then sat looking at an empty stage for about an hour. In the meantime, stages 5 and 6 sat empty for 20 to 30 minutes ... perhaps we were waiting for figure dancers on other stages to come and compete on ours? Who knows. You'd think they'd figure out who had to be where when, and tweak the schedule accordingly. Another grumpiness factor -- couldn't they be a bit more organized?

The figure dances on our stage were interesting. Most of the groups continued dancing long after the musician stopped (note: we had a single accordion player who had to play non-stop for hours, and yes, he did mess up more than once, including one time where he totally pooped out in the middle of a competition -- grumpiness about the musician situation is registered). The judge eventually told one group, "You need to stop dancing after xx bars." I heard the girls whispering, asking why their instructor didn't explain how long to dance.

Eventually, though, the solo competitions started. This was the first feis in which we competed at Beginner 2 level. I missed all of Kid1's dances. She reported that her worst dance was Treble Reel, as she didn't start correctly.

Kid2 seemed to do fine, although she was competing against a boatload of other girls. The way these competitions work at this level: everyone competing in a particular dance makes a long line across the back of the stage (sometimes it can be 2 lines), then the kids come out 2 at a time (other feisaenna sometimes have them dance 3 at a time) and dance their dance, they return to place, the next 2 are already poised to start immediately (as in on the very next beat of the music), and so on down the line. Then everyone bows and walks off. So if you have a large group to get through, it can take quite a while per dance. And it did. Kid1 was done long before Kid2, so she and MrV came into our ballroom to watch.

By the way, the stage manager on stage 6 (where Kid2 danced most of her dances) was excellent. He kept all these little girls organized, made sure kids from the same school didn't dance at the same time (each school has different choreography for each dance, so it's better to mix up the schools so you don't have 2 dancers doing the exact same thing at the same time). He was truly a bright spot in the day.

They arrive in plenty of time to see Kid2's Treble Reel. She had never competed it this dance before, and seemed tentative.

Soon we were finished with all the dances. The girls changed their clothing, MrV gave his wristband to someone else who wanted to see the feis (he had never actually attached it to his wrist, and this was his way of protesting the $10 admission), we took the dresses back to the car (parked several blocks away) and we went to buy a new wig, chat with some people from our school, then to look for the scores. Both kids placed 3rd in Treble Jig! Woohoo! The rest of their scores were 4th or lower, but the 3rd place meant that they each got a medal. But, oh, whoops, the hornpipe scores weren't up yet. Let's wait a few minutes ... a few more minutes ... by the way, where do you want to have lunch, since we barely ate breakfast and it's about noon ... more waiting ... ask the volunteer in charge of posting scores if he knows what may be going on ... he's quite testy, and says the judges sometimes don't get the scores to the stage runners promptly (hmmm, why is the burden on the judge? could it possibly be that the system for getting the scores into the hands of the stage runner could use some tweaking to help it flow more smoothly?) ... waiting ... waiting .... FINALLY! Okay, after an hour, the scores appear and we can head home. Another item of grumpiness -- how long it took for some of the scores to appear.

We will never attend this feis again. Don't like the venue (it's nice as a hotel, but not for a feis), don't think it's very organized, really really really don't like the wristband -- we shouldn't have to pay $10 a piece for something that seems slopped together.

The rest of the day: finish Twist, which consisted of knitting 4 more rows on the collar, steam blocking the collar and button bands, then sewing on the buttons (pictures to follow eventually). In the meantime, MrV took Kid1 to pick up her glasses.

Overall, a productive, if not entirely happy, non-grumpy day.

Juggling

2008-02-14T10:09:00.001-08:00

So I'm trying to make wholesome, nourishing food for my family, homeschool, make some of our clothing, keep the house reasonably clean, and I'm wondering how the heck did Ma Ingalls juggle all of this stuff?

Like, right now I've got more bone broth started, which I did in between lessons this morning. I want to start some lacto-ferment ginger ale but need time to chop up the ginger, except we need to leave to take Kid1 to a Valentine's party for her Scout troop, at which time the leader will probably try to flag me down to ask what exactly we're doing for the theatre badge I'm supposed to lead in March. And I still haven't finished that sweater (although every night at dance I knit on the button band, then unravel it again when I decide I don't like it -- I'm getting really, really good at knitting buttonholes, by the way, having done 21 of them in the past 2 days). And sewing? Umm, no, not lately. Same with cleaning the bathrooms.

Of course, part of it is that Ma Ingalls wasn't hauling kids to dance and Scouts and piano and choir and the library.

Also, it occurs to me that Ma Ingalls life really sucked, when you get down to it. I mean, we've read these books over and over, and a lot of it is pretty bleak. (Side note: today we were in Silver Lake, and read the part where the moved into the surveyor's house, and Pa got out his fiddle to play jigs and reels and hornpipes, and we were all impressed that we know exactly what is meant by each of those terms ... except then we had an argument break out about the time signature for a hornpipe, which I suspect wasn't really the point of that passage.).

(By the way, don't be thinking that the problem with making a lot of your own clothes is that we expect to own a larger wardrobe these days. You're talking to a woman who can (and has) gone months at a time owning only 3 pairs of pants, 1 of which wasn't fit to wear out of the house. That was back in 2007, of course, and I have 2 more pairs now. And in 2006 I wore the same skirt to church pretty much every week -- as opposed to the 3 years before when I'd alternate between 2. Overall, I have a smaller than average wardrobe, it seems. I probably have fewer yards of fabric in my total wardrobe than did Ma Ingalls.)

Must go do something or other....

Red

2008-02-12T06:36:00.000-08:00

Beet Kvass.

I don't care so much about its medicinal qualities. I think it's pretty. And I really, really like beets.

I also don't care so much about Project Spectrum, since arbitrarily assigning colors to months doesn't really inspire me, but it's a nice excuse to show this photo. So, this is my bow to Project Spectrum 2008. There may be others, if I randomly happen to be doing something in the appropriate color.

Really, right now I'm working more in blue:

Fuzzy Feet. Dance class was cancelled last night, I think due to weather. So they will debut tonight.

In order to felt them I threw them in the front load washer with a load of towels. One foot is a bit larger than the other. I might throw them in again with another load of laundry, just to see if they'll even up.

I also got some royal blue PUL yesterday to make dress shields for use in our blue school dresses (Irish dance dresses can't be tossed in the laundry after a show or feis, so we have to invent other ways to keep the sweat off). Not too inspiring as a craft project ... unless you're in Irish Dance. Honestly, I wonder why I've never seen anyone suggest making dress shields out of materials that match the dress? Maybe I'll find out what's wrong with this idea when it all ends in disaster at the feis this weekend. Or maybe I'll be hailed as a hero.

Panic Knitting

2008-02-11T05:01:00.001-08:00

I've been working fairly steadily on Twist, hoping to have it done by the Irish Arts Feis this Saturday. First of all, I think it looks like something you should wear to a feis -- cables, but not too-too, you know? Sort of an "okay, I'm into this Celtic thing, but I'm not so into it that I brought my bagpipes" vibe. Second, I told the all-but-kitchenered lady at dance class that I planned to have it done by the feis, so I feel a sense of obligation; she did comment a couple of weeks later that she wasn't holding me to that (wonder if she reads this blog).

It needs a button band and collar. Oh, and buttons, which I haven't shopped for yet. And I love it, and have enjoyed knitting it so very much that I'm almost sad to see it end.

BUT

IT IS COLD HERE

And we have dance class 3 nights this week. And the studio thermostat is set at Arctic Wasteland, which is great if you're dancing, but really really stinks if you're sitting around waiting for your child to finish up.

There are 2 areas in which you can wait: There's the outer waiting room next to the door -- that would be the outside door that the dancers leave open for long periods as they leave and enter the studio, and generally let 12F breezes blow in. Or, there's the changing room down the hall, which has benches for the dancers to use while changing shoes (although, of course, everyone sits on the floor to change their shoes -- I think that's some sort of Dancer Code of Conduct that you have to plop in the middle of the floor to change shoes and simultaneously stretch and chatter). The changing room is slightly warmer than the outer waiting room, except that you must take off your street shoes from off your feet as though you are entering holy ground, mostly because your street shoes have all sorts of icky crud on the bottom that shouldn't be tracked into the studio proper due to its fancy, springy floor.

And so, if you sit there, your feet get mighty cold. Cold enough to need a pair of Fuzzy Feet

which are being knit in our dance school's color.

At some point I may even embroider our studio's logo on it. For now, though, I just want to get them knit and felted by class tonight. I'm shivering just thinking about it.

Random Bits

2008-02-08T06:14:00.002-08:00

It's been such a whirlwind around here, that I'm having trouble focusing on much of anything, including writing a coherent paragraph. So this will be just bits and pieces.

The cooking adventures from earlier in the week were a mixed bag. The broth is excellent. Some of it became chicken soup. It smells so heavenly that the cat wants to wallow in a vat of it. The kefir was a flop. I was using a powdered kefir which I think was too old. I had it in the refrigerator ... I have some in the freezer, and may try again with that. The whey has been separated from the yogurt, but still hasn't been combined with the beets to make the kvass. I suspect that it would help if I were actually home long enough to do something other than race through the house.

We've been busy with scouts. We've visited a new doctor for a well-child visit, where we learned that Kid1 is officially bigger than me -- both taller and heavier. We've gone to piano. We cleared all the scrapbooking stuff off the dining room table to replace it with sewing stuff (last week the kids were wild about scrapbooking; this week they're drafting patterns for doll clothes).

We went to see Bodyworlds, which is simply amazing.

It was really, really warm, and we were running around in shorts and T-shirts. Then it snowed a bunch, and the kids spent the day sledding. Then it got really, really warm again, and we put the T-shirts back on.

And then there's dance. Ceili class, dance class, another ceili class for the other child, dance performance, another dance class.... Yes, the kids have joined ceili teams. These are, well, they're dance teams. They do group dances that sometimes look like really fancy square dances. Kid1 is on a team that does performances but doesn't compete. She was place on this team basis her height, by the way, and is the youngest and possibly least-experienced. She adores it. And Kid2 ... has been asked to be on a team that is going to the national championships (one of the members who went to Oireachtas -- the regional championships -- dropped out). This is a Big Commitment, and I question our sanity about this daily. It involves lots of performances AND competitions. And workshops. And new shoes, and a new wig, and (most exciting by far) a new School Dress in which to dance.

I'm chugging along on my knitting. I had been doing some sewing, was almost done with the garment, hung it in the closet and forgot about it. I mean, I have maybe 5 more minutes of work for it to be officially done. There's probably some interesting psychological reason for not just Getting It Done. Or maybe I'm just sort of frazzled and disconnected, and forgot about it until now.

I need to go do ... something. Clean something? Organize some schoolwork? Get dressed? Umm, not sure. Maybe I'll just stare out the window and pet the cat.

Reading

2008-02-04T18:46:00.001-08:00

We continue to work our way through Ambleside Online Year One. We're on week 26, sort of. We've finished the Holling C. Holling book already (we had substituted Pagoo for Paddle to the Sea since we'd already read the latter). It has finally sunk in that I really don't like Holling C Holling books, so we whipped through it to get it over with.

In our perpetual Little House Marathon, we are now On the Shores of Silver Lake. This is our second trip through this particular segment of the Little House sequence, and it's striking me as a more depressing journey this time through. I keep noticing all the disasters that befall the family. Sheesh, they should've stayed in the Big Woods.

MrV is reading The LIghtning Thief aloud in the evenings.

Kid1 just finished Crispin for her Bravewriter Boomerang online discussion group (I would link to Boomerang, but Blogger isn't letting me, sigh). Honestly, I don't try to keep up with what all she's reading. She's also working through the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, which obviously has nothing to do with any schoolwork.

Kid2 is reading...well, I really don't know what the heck she's reading. I see her with books. I think she's reading one of the Girls of Many Lands series.

Due to bookstore giftcards, I've had a sudden influx of craft books to browse:

Sensual Crochet by Amy Swenson. Knitting Classic Style by Veronik Avery (if you're on Ravelry you can see all the items in the book there, which is a wicked cool feature of that website), and Designer Needle Felting by Terry Taylor.

I'm also reading Performance Without Pain by Kathryne Pirtle. It focusses on diet, particularly the type of diet promoted by the Weston A. Price organization. Her twist is that she was severely ill (undiagnosed celiac who had eaten wheat for over 40 years), and used concepts in Nourishing Traditions to help heal herself. This has inspired me to re-visit some of the food prep I've done before, so even as I type I have a bone broth simmering on the stove, whey separating out for future use in beet kvass, and some kefir cream soda brewing on the counter (actually I've never done the kefir thing before, and am hoping the whole jar doesn't explode -- stay tuned).

Pets

2008-01-21T08:11:00.000-08:00

The kids want to get another cat. MrV feels we should wait until one of the current cats dies (not that outlandish, since Geriatric Cat has had some close calls in the past few months).

So I suggested that they have Pet Deer.

They hang out in our yard for hours at a time. They eat the acorns and the saplings and the cotoneasters there.

In the evening they hunker down on the lawn, folding those graceful slender legs under them.

And when it's quite dark out, they invite the buck over to, ahem, "make Bambis".

They also potty all over the yard.

And move out of the sunlight as soon as I try to take a picture of them, and generally glare at me like I'm invading their space (which, as a cat owner, I'm pretty used to).

I'm sharing this mostly because I like the picture

2008-01-15T04:41:00.000-08:00

You Are 74% Creative

You are beyond creative. You are a true artist - even if it's not in the conventional sense of the word.
You love creating for its own sake, and you find yourself quite inspired at times.

How Creative Are You?

Except I don't much like the white pencils in the center -- too much white.

(There's a question on the quiz about appreciating input from others. My answer was definitely "no" on that. And I was apparently right, since other people do things like put the white pencils in the wrong place.)

I found the quiz at Good Yarns.

By the way, I'm also sharing this because I've been up since about 5am and have a vague sense that I should be doing something more productive than looking at sewing patterns online. Actually sewing the fabric that's over there on the table, for example, would be more productive. But I'm not quite ready to commit to being that awake yet. So I'm writing. It's easier to erase/delete bad writing than it is to rip bad seams.

Absurd Math

2008-01-11T06:15:00.000-08:00

SInce we are currently operating without a 6th/7th grade math program, Kid1 is spending her time playing Absurd Math.

Except she wants to do it All. The. Time. And she does it on the computer I use to read blogs and check email and load pictures.

If you don't hear from me, it's due to massive math practice sessions.

Ordinary Time

2008-01-08T05:50:00.001-08:00

I love that we're in "Ordinary Time" now. It has such a cool sound to it, don't you think? Like maybe we've been wandering around in a temporal rift for the past few months, but now we've found our way out to Ordinary Time.

And, yes, I know that it's about ordinal numbers (link is to wikipedia article on what "ordinary time" means). But I still like the play on words.

So, since we're back to the ordinary, it's time to get back to homeschooling, right? Actually we started back last week, although on a light schedule. Since there were only three days we schooled, our subjects that fit neatly into 4-day-weeks didn't happen. Here's our homeschool check-in:

Kid1 had taken a long break from Rosetta Stone Spanish, mostly because the computer decided it no longer cared to mess with the CD. I called Rosetta Stone for help. "My disk is dead! Wah!" The service person spent 2 hours on the phone trying to get it to run. He was quite willing to go the distance and spend however many hours it took, but I was getting antsy and suggested that perhaps the problem was with the computer rather than the disk, and I would call back if I felt the need. Believe me, Rosetta Stone may cost a lot, but they really supported the product that day.

Now we have a shiny new computer, and the disk is working quite well, thank you. Except she likes to spend 4 days on each Rosetta Stone unit, so she couldn't start back with it until this week.

And her approach to Latin for Children generally takes 4 days per chapter, so she also took a break from that. Instead, she played around with my Lingua Latina book and disk. I had ordered it way back when, but was afraid to put the disk in the old computer, what with it getting all touchy about disks. We had fun messing around with it last week on the new computer. She's almost done with the first level of Latin for Children -- I think we'll discuss alternating Latin for Children with Lingua Latina.

And for math.... Um. Well. Kid1 has completed all of RightStart, and I had this vague idea that Teaching Textbooks would be a good next step. Except Teaching Textbooks is a computer-based program, and we were having computer issues. Last week, once we had a viable computer up and running I had her take the placement test for pre-Algebra. Alas, she decided she didn't feel confident about multiplying and dividing fractions -- she can do it once I remind her how, but she doesn't come up with the "how" on her own. So she doesn't feel ready to plunge into pre-Algebra, and I'm okay with that considering she's in 6th grade. But Teaching Textbooks middle school math programs don't run on a Mac. And the shiny new computer is a Mac. Sigh. So we're sort of operating without a math program at the moment, which is sort of tough when you're trying to center your curriculum on Latin and math.

Science will probably continue to be rather ad hoc. We go to the Science Center for classes. We go to the zoo for classes. We go on nature walks. We work on science-related Scout badges.

History has been rather disjoint. We have Sonlight Core 6, and have been reading the books on an erratic basis. It has some fun books, we've just been too busy with other stuff to read many of them.

Kid1 continues to enjoy the Bravewriter Boomerang forums. I like having all of the dictation laid out for me, as well as notes on the current book (right now they're reading Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank). I also like that she's getting a chance to discuss books with other kids her age -- we haven't hooked up with a local book club, and this seems to fill that gap. Plus Julie (Mrs. Bravewriter) does a great job of leading the discussion (I peek at the forum sometimes, but don't tell Kid1, okay? because she wants this to be her thing, not mine).

Edited to add: Julie has a blog post about her online classes here that offers some insight into some of the advantages of an online book discussion. I always feel so apologetic about having Kid1 do this stuff online instead of in a class. I think I need to get over that.

And we are poised to start Classical Writing Homer now that life has returned to ordinary, and we no longer are running around like crazed maniacs with too much to do in too little time.

Kid2 has been chugging along in RightStart C. So far it's been easy and enjoyable for her.

We also work on First Language Lessons, and are somewhere in the second year. I think we've just about gotten to the part where it gets dreadfully dull and becomes a matter of surviving until the end of the book.

Kid2 works on Prima Latina, which I also feel is dreadfully dull. But she wants to do Latin. I'm so glazed over by this program I'm unable to see how to liven it up.

She follows along with science and history with her older sister.

We have no grand plans to overhaul our system, nor thoughts of adding exciting new subjects (other than coming up with an actual math program for Kid1 so we don't have to wing it each day). We have about 2 months of calm before the craziness of life explodes again all over our calm little homeschool days. March is going to be a doozy; I'm already dreading it.

Calendar

2008-01-03T05:37:00.000-08:00

Time to put up a new calendar!

This year we purchased the Fairy Tale Moons calendar from the Biodynamic Farming Assoc., and, oh, it is gorgeous. We're all quite smitten with it.

It has lovely pictures. It has snippets of fairy tales -- just enough to whet your interest so you want to run to the library and check out the full version. It has all sorts of interesting information written on the dates -- today is the 10th Holy Night, and the Earth is at perihelion, meaning it is closest to the Sun on its path. Yesterday's snippet told about Thoth and Osiris, and Egyptian mythology about the first 5 days of the year; other days have quotes or historical events.

In the back we have information about, let's see, pole stars, and Gregorian vs. Julian calendar, and Copernican system vs, Tychonic system, and other items of this ilk ... a star map of constellations mentioned in the calendar ... suggestions of how to use the calendar (I aspire to be a Milky Way Master, but admit that we'll probably end up as Big Dipper Basics).

There's no room on this calendar to write appointments and such. That business belongs on the planner, not this beauty. This calendar hangs on the wall, and we stop and look at it every day, gaze at the picture, discuss what we read.

The calendar is also available from Bob and Nancy's Waldorf Bookshop, but if I go there I will end up clicking to go to Colorsong Yarn and then end up wasting an hour scrolling my mouse over hanks of yarn so I can see the pretty colors show up on my screen, all the while debating whether I should get a Goldilocks shawl kit. So, it's best for me to avoid putting items in a cart at that particular website, since I get a little too enthusiastic.

The Joyce Country Ceili Sweater

2008-01-02T04:43:00.000-08:00

We loaded up in the car to go visit Mom and Dad. We took plenty of CDs to listen to, and I took Twist to work on.

And, for some obscure reason, all the way there we listened to The Saw Doctors, and I knit away on my cabled Twist. I felt very Celtic.

Well, I say we listened to The Saw Doctors. Mostly we listened to The Joyce Country Ceili Band:

Although we also liked "Will It Ever Stop Raining" plenty. It's nearly as much fun. I can't find a clip for it, which is a shame. You should really go buy the CD so you can hear it.

After about 4-5 hours of this, we emerged from the car with Irish accents and a tendency to interject "Boomshakalakalaka" into conversations. And Twist had become a Ceili sweater.

I continued to knit on Twist all weekend (while humming to myself a random assortment of Saw Doctor tunes). I finished the back, we got in the car to head home, we turned on the CD, I reached in my knitting bag to start the left front....

OH NO! I didn't bring the needles I needed to cast on the front ribbing! Five hours in the car, and no knitting!

So I amused myself by loading various CDs in the player. No more of The Saw Doctors (well, not as much as in the original trip).

We got home, unloaded the car, put everything away, and sat down to take a breather. And the knitting gods smiled upon me, because Star Trek TNG "First Contact" was on, so we all HAD to sit and watch it. That left front is just flying along:

Okay, confession: it was also knit during Monty Python and the Holy Grail on New Year's Eve. And I think there's some Marx Brothers in there, too. Is it any wonder I'm thinking this is a fun knit? Fun things happen when I knit it!

The Fog Is Lifting

2007-12-21T05:32:00.000-08:00

If I've had something nourishing to eat and a nap I can go maybe three hours in a fairly coherent state. It helps if I spend that time fairly quietly.

I've been knitting on Twist

in Cascade 220 superwash. I got about this far in the cables and realized that I had neglected to change needles to the larger size once I'd finished the rib. I calmly ripped back to the rib, inserted a needle in all the loose stitches, and knitted back up to this point. I was too tired to be anything but calm.

I have been taking online quizzes

You Are a Cranberry and Popcorn Strung Tree

Christmas is all about showcasing your creative talents.
From cookies to nicely wrapped presents, your unique creations impress everyone.

What Christmas Tree Are You?

Hat tip to Drew. This picture is pretty funny when you consider that we just had the "garland discussion" while setting up the tree last week. MrV favors the tinsel sort of garland (MrV would probably come out of the quiz as a fiber optic tree, if that's an option). I kept saying, "We could string popcorn, or make paper chains out of construction paper!". Yep, that's me, stringing popcorn for the tree, sending out the handmade Christmas cards, knitting up presents. (In the end we put some gold beaded garland we already had on the tree. We have so many handmade ornaments that garland is superfluous.)

I also discovered here that I am most like The Librarian (no surprise there) or maybe Death (probably due to my tendency to talk in capital letters; also, I'm on the skinny side), followed distantly by Carrot. None of which makes sense if you don't read Terry Pratchett's books. I discovered this quiz via Ravelry when I joined the Ankh-Morpork Knitter's Guild, by the way. Amazing what you can discover on Ravelry, especially when you're too groggy to do anything but click on links.

In the meantime, while I've been sitting quietly to one side, the kids have been busy cleaning the house. We are hosting a sleepover tonight (this may be really dumb given that I'm sick; or maybe it's really brilliant). They have handed me a list of planned activities, which includes building a roaring fire so they can cook dinner over open flames, then watching about 20 full length movies. Sounds fine to me. I'll be curled up with my box of tissues and my knitting.

Zooming Down the Road to Bethlehem

2007-12-20T05:36:00.000-08:00

Years ago someone gave us a book that had cardstock nativity figures you could punch out and set up. The book also had a little story you could read each day as you set the figures up little by little.

Which is fine, except we have tons of stories to be read every day in Advent, and the story in this book was rather dorky. But the kids wanted to punch out the little cardstock figures and set them up because they like that sort of thing -- it has a sort of paper doll vibe to it. And I didn't want to have random nativity figures strewn all over the house (well, more than we already do), getting all tatty and ripped.

So I came up with a sort of compromise -- we would use the cardstock nativity, but we would read a different story. We would use The Light in the Lantern. Of course, this involved getting other stuff into the scene we were setting up, as our cardstock set didn't come with, say, squirrels or spiders or rabbits. But we sort of had fun finding stuff all over the house to use to illustrate the story as we set it up little by little.

And, of course, the next year we did it again. And again. It had become a tradition. Except I don't think cardstock figures are exactly made to be used year after year.

And this year when we were getting out the Christmas stuff I just sort of left the bag of them laying there. No one seemed to notice that they were missing. "Ah," I though, "the kids have outgrown this. Which is fine, since I'm sick of this particular nativity set."

On Monday of this week Kid2 suddenly announced, "WE FORGOT TO DO THE LIGHT IN THE LANTERN!"

Egads. My bad -- I should've known that household traditions are household traditions, and must be laid to rest carefully, not casually overlooked and forgotten.

The book has 28 stories in it, enough to read one per day for four weeks. And it's about a week until Christmas.

So we did the entire first week (mineral kingdom) on Monday. The entire second week (plants) on Tuesday. And the third week (animals) yesterday. Mother Mary and Joesph are setting speed records on the road to Bethlehem.

Fortunately, we are pretty speedy about about getting our props. We no longer break open a new geode for the story about the boulder in their path -- I just save the same one to use from year to year. Run and get some jagged rocks from around the air coniditioner compressor, plunk down a shot glass with water and glitter in it for the well, the squirrel is in the Playmobil, the spider is in the box of Halloween decorations ... on and on.

Mother Mary keeps falling on her face, possibly due to the blistering pace, or possibly due to the fragile nature of cardstock figures. We have lost the sheep's horns. I have been campaigning to pitch the cardstock figures and get something else. Kid2 is tending to agree (although given how sick I am this week, the kids are being pretty agreeable to everything -- my complaints about the cardstock figures are a welcome break from my complaints that my head is going to explode or my eyeballs are going to fall out next time I sneeze, and today we have the entire new issue of how much my chest hurts when I cough or clear my throat and I might be dying here, do I really have to spend my final moments on Earth setting up these cardstock figures that keep knocking over?).

If we do keep the storybook but ditch the cardstock, I'd like to make some new figures. Out of wool. Using the concept of the angel off the front cover of Living Crafts, which is a magazine that I just discovered this week at Michaels and like so much that I want to sleep with it under my pillow. Many of my thoughts this week seem to center on "sleep" and "pillow", though, so this might not be a good measure.

Today we should catch up with the story, and be able to enter Bethlehem with grace and dignity. Assuming I live that long. Have I mentioned how much my chest hurts every time I cough?

Tuesday Teatime

2007-12-19T04:25:00.000-08:00

Teatime took place in the living room next to the Christmas tree.

Our menu was hot chocolate (in Christmas mugs) and Reindeer Nose Cookies (on Christmas plates). We had purchased the cookies Monday at the zoo; Kid2 had seen them in the gift shop and commented that we should get them for Tuesday teatime.

(An aside: Parking in the parking lots was free at the zoo on Monday. I don't know if that was due to the crummy weather. Maybe they figured that whoever showed up could just park wherever they want?)

And our reading? Need I even tell you what it was? Twas the Night Before Christmas, of course. This was followed by several pages of The Story of Santa Claus.

Teatime is a great way to take a break during the holiday!

Cheap Filler Because I Am Tired*

2007-12-17T05:15:00.000-08:00

This is the sweater I was wearing yesterday:

I'm not sure when I knit it. I know I had it in the early 80s, when I was going through a phase in which I made most of my own clothes (note that this was before I had kids). The yarn is acrylic, and is sportweight; this was back before we had a lot of that newfangled DK stuff.

It may be one of my first attempts at intarsia. The design is all knitted in -- I suck at duplicate stitch. That bit of blue along the shoulders is a horseshoe pattern. And, yes, I really would decide to do an entire intarsia sweater without really knowing how to do the required technique because, well, it's only knitting. What's the worst that could happen if you flub it up?

I have no idea why I still have this sweater. Many sweaters have been knit, loved, worn over and over, and eventually discarded. In some cases I've saved the patterns of those discarded sweaters because I have it in the back of my mind that I want to knit them again someday.

I'm glad I saved this one, though. It's nice to have momentos from the past, especially momentos that are actually useful.

* I expected a busy weekend involving a piano recital, having to be at church at 7:30am. dance class, having 1 (quiet) friend over for a playdate. I did not expect 6 inches of snow, along with the accompanying need to shovel everything and have large herds of children tromping through the house in wet boots and snow pants looking for hot chocolate during sledding breaks. Also, we now have an extra adult winter coat in our kitchen -- where did that come from? Yeesh. I'm too tired to call around and figure out who it belongs to.

Halfway There!

2007-12-14T04:59:00.000-08:00

(Okay, we're a little more than halfway there, but we lost our Internet connection yesterday.)

We have celebrated St. Nicholas Day on the 5th. He left wee little painting sets in the kids' shoes. They were immediately used to paint tiny little landscapes. Perfect for dollhouses.

If you need a painting set like this but were passed by on St. Nicholas day, Michael's carries them in the $5 bin with all the cheapy stocking stuffers. They come with that doll-sized duffle bag you see in the background.

We have worked on our Christmas cards. They are based on a design in Family Fun magazine -- you can see a proto-type there in the foreground. We aren't done with this project yet, but are moving along briskly.

We listen to Christmas music while working on cards. When "I Saw Three Ships" comes on we must halt production and dance a jig because we CAN.

We have celebrated St. Lucia Day on the 13th. This is a popular holiday at our house -- it's Swedish and involves lots of candles and a chance to dress up (white dress and red sash). What's not to like?

I thought the crayons in lieu of candles were quite creative. She is carrying a tiny brownie (actually a piece of sponge painted brown) and a tiny glass of milk (a plastic communion cup with a cotton ball in it). These are both items from the Brownie Swap meet last week -- Kid2 took off the safety pins for Kit's entrance as St. Lucia.

And we've been to see The Man.

I think in this shot he's asking Kid2 if her room is clean. He spent quite a long time talking to them. He remembered them from last year, which was ... magic.

Swaps and Exchanges

2007-12-12T05:18:00.000-08:00

The Brownie troop exchanged Swaps as a Christmas party activity. The kids made the swaps ahead of time, then handed them out at the party.

Kid2 decided that she wanted to make tiny little marshmallows-on-sticks. She loooooves to toast marshmallows in a fire, so it seemed appropriate.

She made the marshmallows out of white Crayola Model Magic. A tiny package made lots and lots of faux marshmallows. As she made the marshmallows she stuck a tiny twig through each one.

After they were dry she hot glued pins to the back. (Her sister nabbed a pinless one to use for dolls to play campout.)

Very cute. Many people were thought that she used actually mini-marshmallows that she had allowed to dry.

The Junior troop had a cookie exchange -- a half dozen cookies for each girl, homemade or purchased.

Kid1 decided to make meringues, which are basically whipped egg white and sugar baked at low temperature (250F). She added a little vanilla, peppermint extract, and also some mini chocolate chips.

It was her first time whipping egg whites into meringues. We don't have the equipment to pipe them out nicely on the cookie sheets, so they're sort of blobby.

But I think the final presentation looked appealing:

In other Christmas news, the tree is in the house and set up. I need to go get more lights, as one of our strands gave out. In the course of all of this putting-up-of-tree I've come to the conclusion that I'm mildly allergic to Frasier Fir -- my arms were splotchy and itchy from handling it, and my nose was stuffing up while I was around it. MrV offered to pitch the whole thing and come up with something else, but I think I can survive the next couple of weeks. But I'm thinking that we might look for a new artificial tree in the post-holiday sales.

If I Had Two More Yards of Yarn

2007-12-10T05:05:00.000-08:00

This is how much black Cascade 220 I have:

I'd like to knit 2-3 more rows in black. That's all. If I could knit 2-3 more rows, I could finish this scarf without having to do much thinking.

But, the yarn is totally gone. As it stands now, the ends don't match -- the beginning has a nice, substantial black border, the end has just a couple of rows of black.

I like that the scarf has 5 complete octaves. It would look wonky to rip out, say, a single black key. Especially since this is a gift for a piano teacher (I think she'd notice, know what I mean?). I like the current length of the scarf. Mrs. Piano Teacher is tall. So I don't want to rip out an entire half-octave.

And since Mrs. Piano Teacher is a knitter, she'll look at how things are cast on and bound off. Really. We actually chat about various cast-ons (casts on?).

So, here I sit, having to actually think about what I'm doing. Which is a shame, because this was a wonderfully mindless knit while we were travelling this past weekend. The illusion knitting takes just enough attention to keep you from dozing off.

The last time I'll see her before Christmas is at a recital next Saturday. I have until then to contemplate what to do. And a little voice in my head is saying, "take it to this week's piano lesson, show it to her and ask her how she would handle it -- she won't know it's for her." Hee.

(The travelling this past weekend was the first family Christmas get together. Gifts were wrapped, delivered, opened, oohed and aahed over. One down! More to come!)

Traditions

2007-12-06T19:03:00.000-08:00

Every year I trade out the (quite heavy and large) every day dishes for the (quite heavy and large) Christmas dishes. Then, at the end of Chritsmastide, I trade them back.

It's a lot of work to unpack and repack those dishes twice a year. And when I pack them I do it well enough that we can load up the boxes onto a moving van. Our lifestyle dictates that sort of forethought.

We also unpack and repack the Fontanini manger scene every year. Early in Advent, the gang just sort of hangs out. Here are some of the crew, sailing the good ship Faber and Faber across the sea:

Later on they sailed on into the family room to watch a movie with us.

In the meantime, the Wise Men were hanging out on the coffee table (currently covered in green fleece for the occasion):

Did you know that they didn't get along? It's true. The guy with the gold started calling the guy carrying frankincense "Frankie", so Frankincense Man started getting all sneery and calling Gold Guy "Goldielocks". I have no idea what role Mr. Myrrh plays in all of this, but the whole thing started getting really ugly. It's no wonder the rest of the gang left the Wise Men stranded there on Coffee Table Island.

Of course, by Christmas Eve this will all settle down, MrV will read the Bible story of Christmas, and the kids will act it out using the Fontanini set. It's a cool tradition.

And, let's see, we have numerous Advent calendars going. We celebrate St. Nicholas Day and St. Lucia Day. Lots and lots of traditions. Beautiful, meaningful traditions.

So why, when Kid1's Sunday School discussed family Christmas traditions, did she choose to tell everyone about the freezer-burnt chicken nuggets for Christmas Eve supper? It started in a year that was such a low spot in our Christmas celebrations, having to do with incredibly icky weather, excited little kids whose priority was making butter cookies for Santa instead of making sure we had edible food in the house for supper, and all those stupid luminarias the neighborhood insisted we should all do (it's really hard to light the candles in luminarias when you have strong winds at about -5F -- your lighter stops working, and you can pretty much stick your fingers right into a lit match and barely feel warmth -- just a little tip from me to you). Believe it or not, the chicken-nugget tradition has gone downhill from there. But I always considered it our family's little secret, not to be shared with the general public.

It's moments like this that I realize I've lost control of the magic of Christmas. My children's Christmas memories are apparently full of bizarro, whacky events that we keep stumbling through. Which is probably more fun, come to think of it.

Deer-Approved Christmas Tree

2007-12-06T05:29:00.000-08:00

In the past we've been artificial-tree people. MrV thinks it's stupid to kill a tree just to stick it in our living room for a couple of weeks, plus cats don't climb artificial trees as much. Plus they're cheaper over the course of several years, especially if you keep using the same artificial tree year after year after year, to the point that your kids associate the plastic smell of the tree with Christmas.

But we knew some people with a tree lot. So we decided to get a real tree.

We got in our car here in Major Metropolitan Area, drove down Fairly Busy St. and stopped to turn left onto Cut-Through St. (which goes over to Really Busy St., which leads to Extremely Busy Avoid-It-If-You-Can St.). Out of nowhere, 4 deer appeared, and went trotting down the sidewalk into the night. They looked like trick-or-treaters, except they weren't carrying treat bags.

We got our tree and brought it home to put in the garage in a bucket of water

and happened to glance out the garage door because of a loud noise. We were being studied by a buck and doe. It was eery. They would not leave, even when we went out to have a better look. MrV tried to take their picture, but we just ended up with pictures of lots of darkness with bright little eyes in the middle.

The tree is a Frasier Fir. We'll keep it in water in our garage, protected from sun and wind, for another week or so.

No deer have been sighted in the garage today, although a cardinal flew out earlier. I'm wondering if the forest creatures want to reclaim our garage now that we have a tree in it.

Our Story So Far...

2007-12-03T05:37:00.000-08:00

Advent is such a special time of year.

It's a time to, well, to eat a breakfast of crinkle cut potato chips dipped in Ranch dip while updating your blog because really you don't have time to sit and be reflective, or even fix something decent to eat.

We started Advent-craziness in earnest last Friday, when I made a skirt for Kid1 to wear to the various Christmas functions:

Ottobre Woman 5/2007 #18. The original in the magazine was made in gold dupioni silk. Kid1 wanted a black skirt; we looked over the black dupioni at JoAnn's, but she felt it "looked like it has dust on it" (there was a sort of white sheen to the black silk). So we ended up with a polyester from the bridal section. She wears it with a pair of my high heels, and looks impossibly grown up.

I was a tad nervous as I got to the invisible zipper insertion, since zippers are often my downfall. The zipper was going in fairly smoothly (I have apparently made every mistake possible with zippers, and am starting to get the hang of it), but I kept noting how amazingly brown the black zipper looked compared to the black fabric. I finally got up to check the zipper package, and discovered that I had purchased a brown zipper. Doh. So, a quick trip back to the fabric store, and I was set. No further problems, although I'll admit that I hand sewed the lining to the zipper since I didn't trust my skills at machine sewing that little bit together.

Saturday morning we went downtown to Shades of Green, a scouting event involving thousands of Girl Scouts wearing identical green t-shirts tromping around a cavernous convention center looking at scouty-type stuff. I felt I should've earned a special badge for driving us to a downtown location I'd never been to before, finding a parking spot, and remaining calm on the way home when the highway entrance ramp I expected to use was closed for construction.

The rest of the day was spent cleaning the house and putting up some Christmas decorations. Then Kid1 and I went to church for an evening Advent service in which she sang (looking all impossibly grownup there in her black skirt and my high heels, sob). Kid2 was sick, and stayed home with MrV.

Sunday morning we all went to church. It was wonderfully balmy when we left home around 9:30 am. By the time we left the church at noon rain was coming down in sheets. The temperature dropped steadily all afternoon. But we were snug inside having a Suzuki piano recital -- Kid1 played and Kid2 read the little story that tied all the piano music together. Various relatives and neighbors were in attendance, as well as Mrs. Piano Teacher. We served snacks on our Christmas dishes. Yay us for getting out some of the Christmas dishes!

The kids decided they both were too sick to go back to church for the evening, so we watched Elf and put up more Christmas decorations.

Two days of December craziness down, 29 to go.

November's Unfinished Object

2007-11-28T05:20:00.000-08:00

The other day Kid1 was getting something out of my closet when this fell on her head:

(Note: the plan was to get one of those Closet Maid closet organization systems AFTER we painted the room, since the closets were as dismal as the wallpapered version of the room)

"Hey, look, it's a sock!"

"No, it's not. It's a cuff."

"Well, it's almost a sock!"

Sigh, no, when you're knitting cuff-down, you still have miles of knitting to go when you're poised to turn the heel and start slogging through the foot. Especially if it's a sock for a man's foot.

And indeed, this is the Father and Son sock from Fall 2006 Interweave knits. I got to the line that said "In preparation for heel flap..." and decided a) I wasn't sure exactly what the pattern was saying, and b) I was sick of working on it. The problem with being sick of it was the subtle chevron -- I kept losing track of where I was in the pattern.

See the chevrons? Barely? Yeah, me too. Except, you know, when viewing them from above, sort of like you would when someone is wearing the sock. From that angle it's glaringly obvious if there's a mistake. So, mistakes must be corrected. (And, yeah, you might say, "well, I can't see them because the picture's fuzzy, " but that makes us equal, since they look that fuzzy to me since I need to go get glasses. Just sayin'.)

However, I took the sock along to piano lessons -- Mrs. Piano Teacher has a big, comfy chair that gets the autumn sun on it, and the autumn sun shines at such a low angle that it's easy to see the little purl ridges of the sock. And the several-month-hiatus helped me decipher the pattern. Or maybe I've knit enough socks in the meantime that I have a better feel for what needs to happen next.

Of course, I haven't picked it up since piano lessons. So progress hasn't been exactly swift. I need to find a comfy chair in the sunlight in my house, I guess.

Finished

2007-11-26T06:25:00.000-08:00

Bee stripe socks:

Bee stripe yarn from Lorna's Laces. I made up the pattern as I went along. These are a Christmas gift.

A more impressive finished object:

Our bedroom.

This is just a little slice of wall between a bookcase and the door. Note that it is painted. Jut plain ol' paint on drywall. NO WALLPAPER.

When we moved into the house 2 years ago, the bedroom was painted a weird tan-brown on top of textured wallpaper, with burgundy border. I set to work right away removing the wallpaper. Our bedroom is stupidly large, so this involved peeling many square yards of wallpaper off the walls. But I finally did it! And then started to scrub the painted walls...and realized that there was another layer of wallpaper under that paint.

Yes, I could see faint images of flowers under the white of the wall. More distressingly, as I scrubbed the wallpaper paste off of the paint, flecks of the paint came off here and there, letting me know that if we tried painting on top of the painted-plus-wallpapered wall we could expect disaster.

So, we started scraping off the next layer of wallpaper. This involved peeling off the upper layer of paint-plus-wallpaper first, then peeling off the paper-plus-adhesive (it had to be a two step procedure, since we quickly discovered that if we tried to take it all off in one piece, the drywall was going to come off with the paper).

Did I mention how much wall surface area we have in our room? Acres. It seemed to take F.O.R.E.V.E.R. I tried to take some of the tedium away by only working on it during Star Trek Voyager reruns (which I now associate with crappy wallpaper, by the way).

But the wallpaper is all gone. The drywall is patched. The walls are painted. The switch plates are back on the light switches after 2 years of no-switch-plates. I wake up in the morning, open my eyes, and see a painted wall in a pleasant periwinkle color.

And if you ever even think about being lazy and not taking down old wallpaper before you paint or paper, you are a very bad person and probably have cooties. Please get away from me.

Also finished this weekend but not pictured: a long sleeve t-shirt for Kid1 in a periwinkle knit that goes nicely with the walls (I'm a big fan of periwinkle); and, this year's version of fleece Hello Kitty jammies for Kid2.

School Work

2007-11-09T05:37:00.000-08:00

Yes, we do get some school work done around here.

Kid1 continues the Bonus Round of RightStart Geometry -- the pages that are downloaded from the website, and not yet published. She has a handful of lessons to go with this. These lessons seem fairly easy compared to what went before. Or maybe they just cover topics that are easier for her. Or maybe she's not actually doing them -- I've pretty much lost touch with the entire operation, and am vaguely aware that she is figuring out stuff about spheres that circumscribe platonic solids. Whatever that means. Okay, actually I know what a platonic solid is. I'm not sure why I care about the spheres that they can be stuck into, unless I'm planning to knit one.

She also merrily plugs away at Latin for Children. She was alternating this with Ecce Romani, but now concentrates exclusively on the Latin for Children. She is charmed by the quirky DVD. We have the early version, the one produced before they decided to get all professional and consistent. We all watch it every week to see what will happen next -- will their cat wander through? Will the girls say something outlandish? Or maybe pop a jaw while yawning, then start giggling?

Odds and ends of Classical Writing Aesop are being done. She felt a need to work with a couple more of the Aesop level stories before moving on to Homer. I was looking over the grammar sheet the other day. "Why do you have OP written over all these words? The instructions don't say anything about OP."

"It stands for Object of the Preposition. We were doing object of the preposition in Latin, and I thought it would be fun to do them on this." Oh. Did I even have a clue about objects of the proposition when I was this age? Probably not.

We've started Bravewriter Boomerang. I have no background in literary criticism. None. I'm pretty sure I never even took a class that explored metaphor or anything else of that ilk. So Boomerang is her opportunity to discuss what goes on in a writer's mind. Yes, she's signed up for Boomerang Complete, which means she can participate in the online forums (I stay out of that -- she has her own password, and tends to her own discussions. We've had some conversations about online safety, and I trust Julie, the forum owner, to keep the kids pretty much in line.). I print out the information regarding the dictation exercises; we would not do dictation on a regular basis if someone else hadn't packaged it for our use.

And then there's piano. And dance. And science (mostly, at this point, Scout badge work, plus Science Center and Zoo classes, and also randomly listening in on conversations ... like at the vet's yesterday, when I was discussing the life cycle of fleas with the vet, which conversation was made easier by the fact that I'd taken entymology in college rather than literary criticism, which may mean I have a duller inner life and write more run on sentences than those of you who were lit majors, but on the other hand I do feel quite at ease discussing the comparative effects of Insect Growth Regulators, and, given the state of my ankles, that is a good trade off for now).

She reads voraciously. Sometimes I steer her to historical fiction. Sometimes I don't.

In the meantime, Kid2 is working through RightStart C. So far it's sort of fun. She is quite fascinated with the card games. I'm not a big fan of the card games, as I'd rather be doing something else, but, aha, she's able to get Kid1 to play the games with her (I also disliked the games back when Kid1 was playing them for RightStart, so Kid1 apparently still has unsatisfied game-playing desires).

We also continue to work through the second year of First Language Lessons. She has completed the booklet of the poem about the months of the year. She had really looked forward to that, having remembered if from when her big sister did it four years ago. Now we're into the part of the book where we whip out School House Rock to supplement the explanations of the various parts of speech. Then after this, as I recall from four years ago, it all gets very dull and we simply try to survive the remainder of the book.

She works on Prima Latina in fits and starts. It is also dull, which we had never noticed until we tried other Latin courses. Mostly she wants to work on it because her sister works on Latin and she needs to keep up.

And she does piano. And dance. And science.

And my own school work? I just got Lingua Latina in the hopes that I will finally wade through more than a couple of chapters of some Latin program on my own. Henle didn't do it for me, nor Latin Book One. And Latina Christiana, Minimus, Ecce Romani and Latin for Children have also failed to make an impression. I will say that I've become very good at reading through and comprehending the first couple of chapters of beginning Latin books, having practiced that skill so many times. After the first couple of chapters, though, it gets ... hard. Eeeew -- chapter 2 of Lingua Latina forced me to remember some of those pesky declensions and actually use them in sentences. Who knew that's what they were for? I liked the declensions better when they stayed in their orderly little charts in the textbooks -- when they start running around the text like they own the storyline I find it very disturbing.

Also, the other day I picked up a copy of John Thompson piano book 3. I had used this book years and years ago, but somehow didn't have my copy anymore. I still had some of the pieces memorized. What a fun book -- not very hard, but a bit more interesting than Mary Had a Little Lamb. Plus it's not Suzuki (having 2 kids go through Suzuki can put you off certain specific pieces of music, let me tell you).

Of course, next week is Thanksgiving, after which we will undoubtably fall to pieces again insofar as school work is concerned. But I will have this lovely snapshot of these few weeks when we had our act together (sort of) to look back upon.

Badge Work

2007-11-07T05:39:00.001-08:00

A few weeks back Kid2's Brownie troop worked on their Colors and Shapes Try-It. The girls did 2 projects that day -- mixing colors, and yarn painting. All the moms were to bring in some yarn for the yarn painting.

(The way that ended up working: I brought in a huge bag that barely put a dent in my stash. I'm not sure that anyone else brought anything at all. I announced that I really really didn't want the leftover yarn back, so the troop now has its own yarn stash.)

"Yarn painting" means that you draw a picture on cardboard or card stock, then glue yarn on the picture to color it in. Family Fun magazine featured some leaves done with yarn on cardboard in a recent issue. They looked really nice, and like an adult had done them with nice yarn bought specifically for the picture they had in mind. Sort of a Martha Stewart rendition of a kids craft project.

Kid2 didn't attend that particular meeting (I was in charge of badge work at the Junior meeting down the hall, and she opted to tag along with me instead), but we peeked at the finished artwork. Unlike the Family Fun magazine leaves, it looked more like 18 young girls had done it with random yarn someone had dumped off from their stash. Which isn't to say it looked bad -- it just didn't look like something magazine editors would photograph. It also looked very wet and gluey.

So, in order to "catch up" with her troop, we wanted to do the project at home. But, well. Wet gluey-ness. Available yarn colors that didn't suit the inner vision of the young artist (because I'm not buying new yarn for this project -- sorry, folks). How to make it more appealing for the young artist and her clean up crew?

We tweaked the project. It became painting with roving on wool felt, using a felting needle. I think it turned out pretty good. I had her look through the available roving, then draw a picture based on the colors available. The background felt is actually a wool blend from JoAnn's -- we had several colors, and she decided white would work best for this project. Then we set up foam to work on, got out the felting needles, and she went to it.

After determining that she wasn't going to felt her hand to the picture (she's needle felted before) I wandered out of the room (this either makes me a very bad mommy for leaving a small child with possibly dangerous equipment, or a very good mommy for trusting her creative genius). In the meantime, Kid1 decided to get in on the action, and did her own little roving/felt picture.

I wouldn't have done this project with her troop -- no way would I have 18 kids ages 6-9 brandishing felting needles -- but I really like it for home badge work.

(The other part of the Try-It she missed -- mixing primary colors of paints to make secondary colors as well as tints, tones and shades -- we earn effortlessly since we only own a few colors of Stockmar paints and so mix up whatever else we need as we go along.)

In the meantime, I've made a list of Junior badgework that can be done outside in pleasant temperatures, and we are scurrying to work on those things in this small window where the weather is neither insanely hot (I think it was 90F out about 3 weeks ago, wasn't it?) or uncomfortably cold (and right now it's 21F, which is getting rather brisk).

Kid1 has decided she wants her hiking badge. This involves either 2 all day hikes, or an overnight hike. I anounced that I thought it might be wise to work our way up to that. Once upon a time I could've just spontaneously gone on an all day hike with no muscular repercussions, but those days are gone. We are working on the walking badge, which involves a 3 week program of walking for fitness, and will, cleverly enough, build up our walking muscles. We're also taking shorter hikes in various wooded areas, during which we're working on tree identification (part of the Earth Connections badge -- as soon as she saw it involved learning 10 trees and 5 other plants with their traditional uses she knew I was going to drag her into it, so she had put it on the to-do list), various nature hikes that fulfill Junior and Brownie requirements, taking snacks (also fulfilling various Junior and Brownie requirements), and learning the ins and outs of Finding Your Way. Wisconsin council has a cool bird-watching badge, a forestry badge, and a prairie badge that I'm hoping we can work into our hikes. It all seems like a great way to spend these sunny, crisp fall days.

Scouting is getting to be more and more fun as I get the hang of how to enjoy it.

October's Unfinished Object

2007-10-31T11:33:00.000-07:00

Last year at this time I had the clever idea that I should knit a Klein Bottle Hat for my nephew at Purdue (the nephew that was recipient of the Purdue moebius scarf).

And, lands-a-livin', Knitty even had a pattern! It was fate!

Then I came to my senses. What does a communication major want with a bunch of geeky topological knitting? (Also, I maybe got distracted by something more interesting that came along, and set the hat to one side and forgot about it until I was looking for that set of knitting needles the other day.)

Geriatric Cat is not impressed. It's taking up too much room on her towel (she sleeps on a towel for reasons I hope I don't need to explain given that my life seems to revolve around this particular subject and I'd like to spend at least 30 seconds thinking about something else other than what feline bodily fluids I need to go clean up). Sooooooo...

RIP IT!

Someday I hope to find a UFO around here that I don't end up ripping up. Maybe next month's UFO Resurrection, which I think is lurking in my nightstand.

Tuesday Teatime

2007-10-31T05:35:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween!

Our teatime yesterday featured Halloween cookies from the grocery store, and apple cider. While thinking about Halloween poetry I remembered James Whitcomb Riley's Little Orphant Annie. Perfect!

My dad is a fan of Riley, and can recite Little Orphant Annie from memory. Having heard him recite it many times helped tremendously with being able to read it aloud -- I don't do well with dialect, and generally try to stay away from it in read alouds. But I had an internal sense of the rhythm of the poem, and even knew bits from memory myself.

I also read Riley's Old October and An Autumnal Tonic (the latter isn't in dialect; I chose it to show that the man could write in plain English, too). Then Kid1 requested The Bear, another piece my dad can recite from memory. Again, I don't think I could've done it justice with a cold reading had I not a memory of listening to my dad.

(And, yes, I called Dad later and told him about our teatime and his contributions.)

Then we got down to the serious business at hand -- Trick or Treat jokes. It's a St. Louis tradition for kids to tell jokes when they Trick-or-Treat (my theory: this may be a holdover from Martinmas celebrations, maybe from the German neighborhoods years ago).

Some we're considering:

What do you get when you cross Bambi and a ghost?

Bamboo.

What does a monster call humans?

Breakfast, lunch and dinner.

What do you call a fat jack-o-lantern?

A plumpkin.

In With the In Crowd

2007-10-30T11:22:00.000-07:00

Yes, I got my Ravelry invite. So now I can join about 40,000 of my closest friends in discussing knitting and crocheting, and generally sucking huge chunks of time out of my day on this new entertainment.

I'll admit, I wasn't going to bother with beta Ravelry. I didn't see the point. Okay, yeah, I knit and crochet. I've done both for years. And, honestly, it doesn't strike me as a big deal. Saying "I knit" is about like saying "I read" or "I give people Christmas presents' or "I drive".

(Also, saying "I knit" in order to impress y'all makes me think of saying "I pee on the floor" in order to impress someone, but that's a comparison that probably needs an explanation.

Years ago, when I was in high school, some younger cousins came to visit. The youngest of the bunch was about 2 or 3 years old. During dinner he decided he really really wanted to make an impression on this high school girl [me] at the table, so he came over next to my chair with an expression on his face that said, "I'm gonna knock your socks off", batted his eyelashes flirtatiously, and announced, "I pee on the floor" in a voice that let us all know that he knew exactly what a girl looks for in a guy.

I've been thinking about that incident a lot lately since Geriatric Cat has decided that standing in the vicinity of the litter box is good enough, and it's not her fault if she pees on the floor. Lord help me, I desperately want some Kitty Depends for this cat. But it's a step up from peeing on the bathroom rugs or peeing on our bed, so let us rejoice in the fact that she's sort of making an effort, even if it is a poor one.

Okay, end digression.)

Two things tipped me towards joining. NUMBER ONE: I'd really wanted to find something like sewing.patternreview.com for knitting patterns, and it occurred to me that this might be it, and NUMBER TWO: Lorraine joined, and even though I didn't know Lorraine and hadn't ever read her blog before, I was pretty sure I was missing out if she was in Ravelry and I wasn't (if someday it is revealed that Lorraine is the universal nexus of fiber trends, I, for one, won't be surprised since I intuited it about a month ago).

Okay, so I'm signed in, but I probably won't do anything with my new Ravelry status because I need to go mow the lawn, clean up the pumpkin seeds all over everything after our pumpkin-carving extravaganza, and mop the cat pee off the floor. Because, in addition to saying "I knit", I also can say "I mow", "I carve pumpkins" and "I clean up after the cat". Y'all know where to find me if you need me.

Another Road Trip

2007-10-30T05:05:00.000-07:00

St. Louis has finally cooled down into autumn, and I'm dying to cast on for a sweater for myself. Ooooh, that would be perfect about now, wouldn't it? What with the hint of frost in the air and the leaves turning, wouldn't it be wonderful to be knitting something all wooly and cable-y for my own pleasure?

But my 2007 Parade of Unfinished Objects has inspired me to stay on task. So, when we packed up to go on a road trip, I took knitting to which I had already commited myself. (And while I'm feeling so virtuous about that, I also decided to tuck my prepositions in neatly, even though it made for a lumpy sentence just now.)

In other words, it was a very, very boring trip in regards to the knitting.

I worked on Counterpoint from Magknits -- mild-mannered black and white stripe scarf from one angle:

Clever illusion-knitted piano keyboard from another angle:

It's for Mrs. Piano-Teacher for Christmas. Mrs. Piano-Teacher knits. A lot. I'm not sure it she's ever seen illusion knitting, though, and I thought she'd get a kick out of this.

I also worked on The Socks Formerly Known As All-But-Kitchenered (Shaun's term in the comments, which has now stuck in my head as the name of the socks):

Mid-way through the heel flap of sock 2. We don't have dance class this week, so I'm unable to wave them in front of snarky dance-moms. Actually, it would be better to simply show up with them totally done. Except they don't fit me (they're a Christmas present), so I'd have to be casually carrying them or something.

Anyway, you may be wondering "why were you on a road trip?". (And if you weren't wondering that, you can stop reading now.)

This was the weekend that Kid2 made the pilgrimage to that most sacred site for middle-class caucasian 8-year-old girls. Yes, the fantastic, amazing, awe-inspiring Aunt E took her to American Girl Place in Chicago. To let you know what a rite of passage this is, last week Kid2 discovered that one of her good friends (also a middle-class caucasian 8-year-old girl) was going to be there at practically the same time, transported there by her grandparents. Expect much squealing when they see each other later this week and compare notes on the experience.

We drove to my parents' place in Indiana, and Aunt E picked up Kid2 for the trip to Chicago. This left us to hang out at the retirement center where Mom and Dad have an apartment. The retirement center is within reasonable driving distance from a place you can go horseback riding (not that any of the retirees go horseback riding on a regular basis, other than my parents, who consented to go along with us). It was a glorious fall day, and a great day to be out in the woods on horseback.

(Aside: it was also a great day to drag all of your trash into your back yard and set it on fire, judging from the number of people we saw doing that. Or maybe people in Indiana are trying to recreate the California fires. I don't know. But it was sort of weird how many people were out doing it last Friday.)

We also stopped by an apple orchard. MrV has a quest for unpasteurized apple cider every fall; it's getting harder and harder to find the stuff. The cider we found this year is amazingly good. Skiles Orchard, folks.

The retirement center also has a bowling alley. Four lanes, lots of shoes and bowling balls to choose from (including switching shoes and/or ball mid-game). Hand scoring, so you're not locked into bowling in a certain order or a certain number of frames. You'd be amazed how much a 12-year-old can bowl when given a chance to run down and do it for free whenever she wants. It's safe to say I bowled more this weekend than I have in the past 10-15 years. Also, I got my bowling groove on to the point where, yes, I actually bowled 2 strikes in a row in the final frame of the final game we bowled over the weekend allowing me to BEAT MRV.

MrV and my dad also made it to Purdue's homecoming. Kid1 worked on various Junior Girl Scout badges that involved hanging around large amounts of old people, although we weren't able to find any women that were Girl Scouts between 1912 and 1950 (we will continue quizzing the retirees about that when we return for another visit -- the odds are in our favor, given the age group we're hanging around with there).

Overall, other than the boring knitting, it was a fun trip. And I get to feel virtuous about the knitting. It's a winning combination.

Costumes

2007-10-24T05:35:00.000-07:00

We have 2 huge boxes of costumes downstairs. Actually, they're those boxes the moving companies use to move your clothing from your closet -- the tall ones with a hanger rack. I cut them down some, and we hang up a lot of our costumes in them. Other costuming accoutrements (hats, gloves, tiaras) are stored elsewhere (okay, generally they're strewn all over the basement floor).

Our latest addition, finished just in time for The Big Day, the day we take our show door-to-door through the neighborhood:

Simplicity 0523/3626, in a size that doesn't appear anywhere on the pattern (not that I'm bitter that I had to resize 18 billion frickin' pattern pieces since they couldn't include a size 6 on their stupid pattern). It was hard to photograph due to the glare of all the shimmery fabric. Also hard to photograph without anyone in it, and the intended wearer is upstairs asleep. What you're looking at is a pair of I Dream of Jeanie pants with a matching top laying on them -- there, now does it make sense?

Yes, this is the reason I haven't been blogging or even cleaning the house or cooking decent meals the past few days -- I've been putting together fabric, overlay, contrast fabric, miles of trim, and boatloads of velcro.

For the record, the other child has very sensibly decided (currently**) to dress as something easy for Halloween: salmonella. This will involve wearing white, and carrying around her "little sister Sally" in a basket with some fake eggs. She bravely attempted to convince her sibling to wear a hospital gown so she could play a victim of salmonella, but the lure of all the glittery fabric has proven too strong for that sibling (plus there was Mommy growling under her breath "I spent hours making this damn costume, I expect to see you in it" in a threatening manner).

**This could change in an instant, of course.

Reflecting on the past week

2007-10-18T18:32:00.000-07:00

It's been a blur:

Homeschool class at zoo, 1.5 hours plus driving time.

Homeschool class at Science Center, 1.5 hours plus driving time.

Lead 15 Brownies in Plants Try-It field trip, 2 hours plus driving time, plus large chunks of time explaining where and when we were meeting. Plus get there early to Be Prepared (and also make sure I made it there without getting lost, which has sort of been a theme for living in St. Louis -- every time I make it straight to the correct place a cheer goes up in the car).

Conceive of and execute a plan to get a Junior Girl Scout to her field trip for Science in Everyday Life badge in a different location (about 45 minutes away from where the Brownies were).

(The above 2 activities involved doing things like having to make phone calls to people I barely knew. This is so far outside my comfort zone I felt like I needed a passport.)

Swimming lesson.

Piano lessons (had to be rescheduled to different time slot due to other stuff going on).

Dance lessons (ditto on the rescheduling).

Choir and youth group.

Take cat to vet. Pick up cat from vet. Figure out how to get antibiotics into cat. Note: if you've ever wondered what would happen if that abcess bursts on its own without having it drained by the vet, let me tell you, it stinks. Literally. Stinky pus is inside that abcess. And then you have to go to the vet anyway since you can't clean in properly without shaving, and the cat's fur is so thick and the cat so wiggly when you try to clip fur in that spot that he needs to be tranquilized. Plus he needs antibiotics. And the vet tries to say, "Well, he saved you the cost of having me drain it," but the vet doesn't realize that the cat decided to lay on your new, clean fabric after the abcess (full of stinky pus) burst.

Help child pack for her first camping trip. Take child to drop off location for the trip. (Actually, we haven't done that last bit yet. That happens this afternoon. I'm pretty sure I can get straight to the place without getting lost. I mean, we've driven by the place before, although we've always been on the highway, and it's on some side street. I'm assuming I can figure out which side street it's on. Heh.)

Overall, a good week for that Multum non Multa homeschooling style. I think we've managed some math and Latin most days.

What the Well-Dressed Scout Will Be Wearing to Sleep In at Camp

2007-10-18T04:40:00.000-07:00

And the Camp Leaders spake unto the Junior Scouts, saying, "Thou shalt bring jammies with pants to camp. Also, thou shalt bring a stocking cap to sleep in, just in case the weather turns bitterly cold. For lo, we control much, but not the weather."

And the Junior Scout moaned and cried out, "Mommy, I have no jammies with pants."

And the Mommy replied, "Fear not, for we have that pattern you used in sewing classes last summer to make capris -- we'll just make the full length version. Also, I think a soft wool hat would keep your head warmer and more comfortable, so let's look at yarn."

Jammie pants from Butterick 3314, except this time we walloped off part of the torso, since when she made it over the summer it looked like those old-man pants that come up to a person's armpits.

"Gee, Gail, I don't recognize that fabric from that huge pile you just got ."

Ahem. Yes. Well, good for you memorizing my fabric stash. But I can now leave my house (via the new steps, even!) and go to the fabric store. And purchase more fabric. So. Moving along....

The hat is out of Cascade Pastaza Paints in color Forrest, and it is wonderfully soft. I knit it up on size 10.5 needles -- I think 10s would've been better, but I found the 10.5s, and am not sure whether or not I own 10s. Kid1 picked the color -- she wanted variegated green, and wanted a pink stripe (out of some WoolEase we had around) to jazz it up. I sort of like how the greens pooled in swirly stripes.

So I'm at dance class finishing up this hat, right? And this other mom asks, "What happened to the sock you were knitting? Did you finish it?"

"No. I still have to kitchener the toe [aside: all knitters know that kitchenering the toe is a tiny little thing, yet something you don't want to do while standing around waiting for your kids to come out of dance class]. Plus I was sort of sick of it. So I'm knitting this for [daughter for whom I should come up with clever blog-name]'s camping trip this coming weekend."

"Oh." Then, in That Voice, "So, you have just have one partly done sock." And walked away.

I laughed and called after her, "Hey, all it needs is to be kitchenered."

First of all, you don't use That Voice to diss a sock that only needs to be kitchenered -- it reveals that you have no idea what needs to be done to the sock to complete it.

Second of all, you don't use That Voice on the reigning Queen of That Voice. Give me a break. Your paltry efforts at That Voice are likely to earn you That Look from me.

And I let you know that That Voice didn't do its job by laughing and shrugging off your statement, which I now publish so more easily intimidated knitters will learn to roll their eyes and shrug off people like you. Also, I'm publishing it because everyone else says they sometimes get weird comments from folks about their knitting, and I always say, "Gee, no one ever says anything like that to me." So, this is either a first, or else I usually ignore comments like this as unworthy of my attention. Either way it works for me.

RightStart Geometry

2007-10-16T05:29:00.001-07:00

Woohoo -- the book is finished!

Of course, now we have all the lessons that haven't yet been put in the book. The website has downloads of several lessons. I haven't printed them out yet. But still, it's exciting.

As to why I haven't been giving much description of what's been going on with RightStart Geometry, well, it's because I've had less and less to do with it. Kid1 deals with it all pretty much on her own. I deal a little with the fallout, such as when she paused too long between lessons and apparently forgot how to do basic trig (much weeping and gnashing of teeth that week). And occasionally she would ask me a question....

Wow, did it ever reach the point where I couldn't answer questions, since I hadn't been following along. Yes, I can do trig, but I'm not really tip-of-the-tongue with it. I would stare blankly at whatever diagram she was showing me ("Mommy, I need to know this interior section of this pyramid so I can compare it to this cone" -- ick, I just remembered that I did dislike parts of math back in school, particularly anything to do with cones). And the answer sheets don't really go step by step through the logic of solving the problem. Or maybe they do, but not in enough detail for me -- I want them to explain it like Mr. Broman did years ago in high school trig, and the answer sheets are more like that TA in that Saturday morning math class freshman year at Purdue.

Also, one memorable occasion I used the phrase "well, you need to isolate x on one side", and, gees, you'd have thought I'd announced she needed to sacrifice her firstborn on a flaming pyre. "That's algebra! I don't know algebra!" Um, yes, you just did it in all of these problems up here without realizing it.

All of which is leading me to consider what to do next -- what program will we try once all of this is done. I'm factoring in her flair for drama about math concepts she doesn't instantly comprehend, as well as my dislike of cones. Where do we go from here?

Forging Ahead Through October

2007-10-15T03:48:00.000-07:00

The Concrete Guys have come and gone, taking their noise and mess (well, except for all the muddy bits where we need to put grass or mulch or something). They really were an exemplary work crew, arriving around 6am every day, beginning work before 7am and working steadily for the entire day. Once I glanced out the door and saw a guy with a sandwich in one hand sweeping off the step with the other hand, apparently not willing to stop for lunch.

Yes, this was a private company. They were fixing the mistakes of the crew who originally built the place many years ago. That original crew has moved to Ami's city, and now work for the public works department putting in streets and curbs in Ami's neighborhood. (Oh, I am so witty this morning. Did I mention that I've been up since 4:30? On purpose, even, with the alarm clock going off then and all. And guess what -- most of this week is going to be like that.) (By the way, I meant to link to one of Ami's posts about the concrete guys on her street, but Blogger disagrees with that concept. If you normally read Ami's blog you know what a fun bunch she had working over there this summer.)

The first day was extremely noisy and mind boggling. I spent it ordering fabric:

Sewzanne's was having a sale. That's 9 different cuts of fabric, most at least 2 yards. It arrived a few days later; I opened the box and had no memory of why I ordered most of it. It was sort of like getting a present from someone else, with the someone else being my alternate personality.

I also sewed. The Easy Pants/design #37 from Ottobre 4/2006, in size 170:

I didn't have any fabric for the pocket facing, and no good way to go get some what with the concrete equipment all over the place (not to mention the lack of steps out the door), so I used some funky Hello Kitty fabric purchased years ago. Kid1, the intended recipient liked that detail, since it doesn't show at all in normal wear. Other than that, she doesn't like the pants. But, aha, I do, and they fit me. Except that the drawstring is all wonky -- I centered it over the fake fly instead of over the front seam. So I need to take off the waistband and twitch it around a bit.

We did manage to get quite a bit of schooling done once the noisiest pounding was over. When you have a crew arriving before dawn every day you're inspired to get up and out of those jammies and right to work. Heck, Kid2 was finished with most of her work by 9am Wednesday, and asking if it was time for lunch yet.

But we plan to return to the abyss of homeschool slothdom this week. We'll also be running around 3 times as much as usual to make up for being stuck inside last week. Unfortunately, I'm not exaggerating. Sigh.

Abandoning All Hope of Coherent Thought

2007-10-09T06:24:00.000-07:00

A guy is running a large drill about 15 feet from me. He/They are breaking up our porch. It is loud. It makes the house shake.

(For the record, the geriatric cat is okay with this, as she has gone somewhat deaf. So, if you were wondering how this effects the cat, there you have it.)

Since I cannot string a line of thought together due to the uproar, blogging will be suspended. Possibly for several days, given that we will then have to catch up on our homeschooling and life in general.

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure this is a good time to order fabric online. And maybe yarn. And books. Lots of little (or big) comforts to look forward to.

The Perfect Outfit for Kit

2007-10-03T13:40:00.000-07:00

If you're unfamiliar with the American Girl pantheon, Kit is the doll that represents the Depression Era. You know, when people made do with what they had, and didn't spend a bazillion bucks on doll accessories.

So, it seemed fitting to make an outfit for Kit by cutting up old clothes:

Actually, I had been a bit too efficient on getting rid of MrV's old plaid shirts, so I had to buy a bit of blue plaid from the fabric store for 50 cents (he still had a blue plaid shirt that would've been perfect, but he wouldn't let me near it with the scissors). The turtleneck is from a pique golf shirt. The pattern is once again from Joan Hind's Sew the Essential Wardrobe for 18-Inch Dolls. Once again I modified the pattern, particularly giving the turtleneck a back velcro closure since I think pulling a turtleneck over a doll's head is the pits.

By the way, this post should no be taken as meaning that anyone here actually owns a Kit doll. The outfit was made as a birthday present. The birthday girl will be travelling to American Girl Place with a dear aunt sometime soon to make The Big Purchase -- she already has a Welcome Home sign hanging in her room for the day Kit arrives.

Harvest Time

2007-10-03T13:34:00.000-07:00

Did you know deer eat tomatoes?

I knew they eat coleus, even if you have them in a pot by the front door. And, of course, they eat hosta and daylilies.

But, apparently there's nothing quite like a juicy tomato on a hot summer night. Even if it's off of a plant in a pot on someone's patio. I think they might eat the blossoms, too.

The kids were thrilled to nab these two before the deer got them. And this is the total harvest for 2007.

UFO Resurrection for September

2007-09-26T19:24:00.000-07:00

This is my most embarrassing Unfinished Object.

You know, it takes quite a lot to embarrass me when it comes to my knitting. This is possibly because I am delusional about my abilities. Or maybe I've just reached a point where I don't care what other people think.

But this is even beyond my skill at rationalization.

It's the Unifinished Object that is also Forgotten:

And when I say "Forgotten" I mean that I have no idea what this is. I know I knit it. I know that it's some pink Rowan Calmer with a circular needle stuck in it. I know that it looks like it had another circular needle stuck in it which has now been pulled out to be used for something that struck me as more important at the time.

And I know that it was stuck in a bag with a couple of sock patterns. It's obviously not a sock.

No clue. Only a vague clue where any more of this yarn might be. I remember purchasing the yarn in 2006 with the intent of making the Hourglass Sweater from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. I also remember that I while I was swatching it occurred to me that the sweater would look bad on me, especially in that color. So I cast on ... this ... instead. Hmmmm.

So, rippity rip rip, and we've decluttered another Unfinished Object.

Tuesday Teatime

2007-09-26T05:00:00.000-07:00

We're continuing our 2007 theme of celebrating major Chinese holidays. This week brings us the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival.

As usual, my main reference was Moonbeams, Dumplings & Dragon Boats by Nina Simonds, Leslie Swartz, and the Children's Museum of Boston.

Of course, you can't have an Autumn Moon Festival without moon cakes. I made my own based on the recipe in the book, which is quite similar to this recipe:

I didn't have a moon cake mold, obviously. I started out putting various Chinese symbols on them with a knife, but ended up just making random designs. Also, instead of making my own filling I just used coconut-covered date rolls, which can be purchased at Whole Foods or Trader Joe's.

The moon cakes are to be eaten by the light of the moon, but out weather forecast was for clouds and rain. Our compromise was to have tea time after supper. We used a red tablecloth for good luck, and brought out many of our Chinese knick knacks. We also had grapes on the table (because they're round like the moon), and lit many candles:

Our beverage was choice of decaf tea or blackberry juice (the blackberry juice was in honor of upcoming Michaelmas -- sometimes we mix our holidays, especially when there are so many interesting ones all in the same week).

We read the story of Chang E and Hou Yi, and we read about hiding notes in the moon cakes to overthrow the mongols.

Later that night, after the kids were ready for bed, we realized that the moon had magically appeared from behind the clouds. We all ran outside to see it hanging so bright and round and heavy. We looked for and found the Jade Rabbit in the moon. We looked for Chang E, but didn't see her -- perhaps Hou Yi had already come to visit, and they had retired to the jade palace?

A Mnemonic

2007-09-25T13:19:00.000-07:00

Kid1 was reading a zoology book to Kid2. They were discussing taxonomy. They were discussing figuring out their own mnemonic to remember classification -- kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species.

"Okay, we're supposed to come up with a sentence that uses the first letter of each of those words, see? So the first word will start with K."

K
P
C
O
F
G
S

For pete's sake, it was time for Star Trek! Do you know how long kids can linger over a puzzle like this? It was a crisis, and I felt I simply had to intervene.

"Klingon!..." I exclaimed (since it was time for Star Trek), pointing to the K, "...potty chairs!..." (always a popular phrase to insert) ...

"Klingon potty chairs on freighters glow softly! See, sometimes the lights on the Klingon freighters are low...wait a minute, do Klingons even have freighters, or do they just fly around on Birds of Prey?"

"Yes, they have freighters, " my Trekkie daughter assured me.

"Okay, then, sometimes they keep the lights low, so they have the potties glow in the dark so they can find them." Those Klingon ships always do seem sort of dark to me, you know.

Kid2 danced around the room repeating the sentence over and over. KLINGON POTTY CHAIRS ON FREIGHTERS GLOW SOFTLY. KLINGON POTTY CHAIRS ON FREIGHTERS GLOW SOFTLY.

I feel confident that she will remember this mnemonic the rest of her life. Can you picture her chanting that in college?

Best of all, they were able to finish up the project, turn on the TV and watch Star Trek. Which, wouldn't you know it, featured Klingons.

Iggly Plops!

2007-09-24T05:44:00.000-07:00

What is an iggly plop? Well, that's what giants call "little people" -- iggly means little, and plops are people, at least in the language of Groilish. And, according to Julia Donaldson, Groilish is what the giants speak.

We discovered the language of Groilish, as well as much more about giants, in Donaldson's book The Giants and the Joneses. This was one of our read alouds last week, and definitely our favorite book of the pile. Within a few days we were all speaking Groilish (there's a dictionary in the back of the book). Shoot, I wish we could pick up Latin as easily as we picked up this imaginary language. Maybe Julia Donaldson needs to write fiction in which the characters speak Latin or Greek -- that would be huge help to our homeschooling efforts.

It maybe weeks before we stop calling beans "bimples" (the book refers to many journeys up and down a bimplestonk) and stop referring to the cat as a "spratchkin".

I can already see that this is going to be one of those books we talk about for years to come. Sharing books together as a family is so cool. I should write thank you letters to the authors of our favorites. Well, assuming the authors are still alive. And in Julia Donaldson's case we'd write a letter saying "oidle oy!".

Another Weekend, Another Feis

2007-09-23T12:00:00.000-07:00

The Graham Feis flew by for us.

We checked in on Friday night, and the girls were each given a bag of Teddy Grahams as their "Graham Treat" (cute, eh? Although, if someone hadn't explained it to me, I never would've gotten the pun). We had some time to explore the DoubleTree hotel and figure out where the stages were. Stages 1,2,3, and 4 were all on the indoor tennis courts in the sports center.

MrV spent much of the evening reprising Ceili Band. It appears to be our feis themesong. Not that we remember any more of the song than we did 3 weeks ago (I'm getting him the CD for Christmas, I swear). At this point we've started inserting the line "we're a Ceili Band!" randomly into most of the songs we sing.

Since the kids were dancing on stages 3 and 4, we opted to park at the sports center's entrance the next morning (hurrah for us for knowing that there was a separate door and parking lot back there, as the tennis courts are a looooong hike from the front entrance of the hotel). As a bonus, the sports center also has nice locker rooms, which we used to slip into the don't-wear-in-the-car-lest-you-crush-it school dress. Can I tell you how nice it is to use an actual locker room instead of a tiny bathroom or hallway corner to change in? Absolute luxury.

This is what it looked like on the tennis courts early Saturday morning. That's Kid1 and Kid2 warming up in the front left of the picture.

There was a heavy chemical funk in the air, and it was warm and cozy, but as the morning progressed they kicked up the HVAC -- it cooled off some, and the smell was tolerable. I don't know if it was from the finish they painted on the stages or something else. By the way, the stages really did look nice. They had advertised that dancers wouldn't need to tape their shoes, and I think they were right (nb: you put duct tape on the bottom of your hardshoes to help prevent slipping if you're dancing on a wonky surface).

As I said, the feis flew by for us. No knitting was accomplished -- there was no time! The First Feis and Beginner 1s went through all of their dances right after the team dances. The kids were zipping up to the check in almost as soon as they were finished dancing; at one point the check in for their next dance was while they were on stage. We were finished by about 11AM or so. We hung around a bit to see results (some of the slip jig results disappeared for awhile -- as in "over an hour" -- so we were killing time).

During this time we wandered over to stage 8, which was the Arts and Crafts competition. And, you know what? I could've thrown my socks on that table, and won a prize. Well, except I was wearing the socks that irishgirlieknits knit for me, so really she would've been the one to win, not I (but, she's done the feis-thing before, so that would've been appropriate). Anyway, I need to do some Celtic crafting, no doubt. And figure out how to enter into that part of the feis.

Speaking of wandering around, this feis snaked all over the place. It was amazing! Our area of stages 1-4 was wonderfully compact (not crowded at all, but everything we needed was right there), but the trip over to the Feisworx room was a major hike. I think the more advanced dancers had more of a chore to get from place to place, as they were in various meeting rooms here and there.

The kids' scores were ... interesting. Kid1 did her reel with grace and confidence, the best I've ever seen her do. Her score was way below those of the girls who placed. Kid2 forgot her hornpipe halfway through; she place 3rd out of 6 competitors, just 2 points from the winner, with the sole comment of "timing" (umm, yeah, her timing sort of slipped when she slowed down to remember what the steps were). So, we just shrug and say, "that's a feis for ya", and go on with life, I guess. After all, we're at Beginner 1 level, so it isn't as though the scores greatly affect much of anything. I imagine it starts getting more cutthroat at Beginner 2, and the pressure builds as you work up through the levels, since where you place affects what level you're considered to have attained.

We also saw the PC/OC girls dance their 8-hand, during which one of the musicians messed up. THAT was interesting. I heard a mom ask, "does the judge realize the musician messed up, not the dancers?" I think the judge is supposed to be in charge of the musician, right? so theoretically the judge should know. (If you don't hang out in the Irish Dance community, PC/OC is the elite level Beginner 1s dream about.)

(Let me insert here that I think the job of the feis musicians seems unbearably dreary to me, and they must be very special people to take on the task. The musicians sit there hour after hour after hour playing the music over and over and over. One mistake in 8 hours isn't a bad average. I was just interested to see what happens and how everyone reacts when someone makes a mistake like that. Overall, I think all feis musicians deserve medals just for showing up.)

And we saw a foot injury when 2 of the girls ran into each other; one of them had to be carried off the stage. I think she was crying from the sheer tension of the contest as much as from the pain.

One of the most interesting sights was the discovery of private baton lessons at the Doubletree! The kids took baton lessons back in Ohio. This Irish Dance mania has somewhat replaced that activity. But it's still a bit of information to tuck away, should we decide to go back in that direction.

Best of all, we were home in plenty of time to tidy up the house and have a birthday party that night!

If I Had a Completed Sock for Every Sock I've Knit...

2007-09-21T05:39:00.000-07:00

Sheesh, if I actually completed all the socks I knit, I'd have socks for everyone in my family, plus pairs to spare.

Instead, I spend most of my time knitting, ripping, reknitting.

Boilermaker sock, take 1, the fussy, mosaic concept.

Boilermaker sock, take 2, the long, skinny version.

And, now, Boilermaker sock, take 3, the chunkier, possibly-could-fit version:

It's been a good week for sock knitting. We had a homeschool class at the zoo, and a homeschool class at the science center (and, yes, we actually made it this time), a Girl Scout meeting, a dance performance, and a piano lesson (by the way, it's been a crappy week for getting actual homeschool-at-home lessons done, as you can imagine). I turned the heel during piano lessons, and now do not have to worry about turning the heel during tomorrow's feis (bonus: the wonky stage assignments for Kid2's hornpipe appear to have been changed, too). All I have to cope with are the gusset decreases. Woohoo! Too bad I've totally lost interest in Irish Dance, and have moved on to a new obsession....

It happened rather abruptly, this loss of interest. Kid1's Girl Scout troop is planning a weekend camping trip for the fall. Kid1 has never been on a trip like this, so we were looking over the packing suggestions together -- it's sort of like gathering a trousseau, for pete's sake, with multiple pairs of underwear, multiple pairs of pants, 2 pairs of pajamas with pants ("hmm, you know, we could sew those"), hat for daytime, stocking cap for sleeping ("fleece or wool would be good for that, since it should be soft and snug"; "Do you think you could knit one in Junior Girl Scout green? With maybe a little pink trim? Wouldn't that be cool!"), multiple pairs of socks ("that's so if you get them wet you can change them; if they were made of wool it'd be really nice, wouldn't it, since wool stays warm even when wet ... wow, would you want me to handknit socks for this?"; "No, I'd rather have the hat"; too bad, I want to make the socks anyway), etc. And, well, before you know it, we're pulling out sewing patterns and knitting patterns, and looking over yarn and fleece and flannel options.

Here's the problem we're having with the packing list: she's outgrown practically all of her clothing. She can use a lot of my clothing on this trip since 1) she is now as tall as I am, and weighs almost as much as I do, and 2) all of my clothing looks like it's spent a few weeks grubbing around a campsite already, so it's not like she's going to ruin it. But we do need to get some items for her (after all, she has no cool weather clothing that fits whatsoever), and why not drive ourselves crazy trying to make it all ourselves? I mean, that's the way we do things around here, after all. And the camping trip gives us a deadline, so we aren't still trying to get around to this, oh, say, next March.

As to whether the Boilermaker socks ever get finished, well, who knows. If I'd knit straight through without ripping I'd already have a pair. As it is, I have half a sock, and a head full of ideas for other things I want to knit (or sew) instead of these.

Help! I'm being sucked into an Irish Dance vortex!

2007-09-18T05:41:00.001-07:00

The other day, after dance class, I looked out in my backyard to see these strange creatures hanging out under the playset:

Within 24 hours they had metamorphed into something more like this:

That's 3-hand they're doing, by the way. It's mostly taught in ceili class, although apparently my kids have picked up enough in regular classes to do it well enough for the crowd at the parish fair.

About once per month their teacher comments, "They really should be in ceili class."

And I counter, "You're probably right, but ceili meets on blah-ti-blah night, and that's when swim class meets."

Yesterday morning I got an email from her. "Good news! Ceili for under-8s is now on blee-ti-blee night!" Kid2 is in under-8. So, both kids could now do ceili since the under-12 ceili meets late enough on blah-ti-blah night we could make it.

So, when we arrived at dance class last night I started quizzing other parents -- how much of a commitment is ceili? The moms cried out "It's HUGE!" and the dads tended to just sort of snort that snort that means "you really don't want to know". I don't know how other schools do ceili, but ours sends the teams to Oireachtas (which a year ago I couldn't even pronounce, let alone consider having my kids compete in) (I'm pretty sure I'm still pronouncing it wrong). Competing in Oireachtas is a huge time commitment, as well as monetary -- there's the hotel stay, of course, plus a brand new wig just for the occasion, and a new pair of ghillies. And the competition pressure, I'm sure, is enormous.

But, you know, it would be sort of fun to see the solo competitions at Oireachtas. Just sayin'.

So. Sigh. I'm sure the kids would enjoy the class itself, and getting close to the other families on the team would be cool, and I'm sure it would help the kids' technique. But. The extra-curricular activites are such a delicate balancing act, and this could easily send the whole thing toppling.

In the meantime, I announced that I had reached a significant turning point in my career as an Irish Dance mom -- I want to buy my child a wig because I'm sick of putting hair up in spikes. We have a feis this Saturday, so I will be spiking 2 heads of hair again on Friday (this works out to 5 days out of 8 that I'm messing around with dance classes, performances, hair, or dance competition here in mid-September).

Saturday's feis is obviously planned specifically to drive me crazy. First, they scheduled it in September, a hugely busy month for me. They also scheduled it at a point when my knitting will involve turning a sock heel, which, as I've said before, I can't do well at a feis. I'm almost positive the feis committee discussed these things when setting up this feis. It's beyond coincidence.

Plus they've posted the stage assignments, and, well, they're weird. All over the place they announce that they have 7 stages. And then I read the stage assignments and discover that Kid2 is dancing hornpipe on stage 8. Well. Now. That's interesting. Is she going into the Twilight Zone for this competition? (Seriously, if you read through everything you discover that stage 8 is for arts and crafts, baking, and music. I'm hoping there's some sort of dance-able area to it, and we can figure out when the heck we're supposed to go to that room to dance. I'm pretty sure other kids from our school are in the same boat, and their moms probably aren't going to be fretting about sock heels at the time, so we can maybe just follow them around.)

By the way, yes, it's possible to buy an Irish Dance outfit from American Girl (although we don't much like this year's model). And it's possible to buy one from an online vendor such as this one. Joan Hinds has a pattern in her book Sew the International Wardrobe for 18-inch Dolls, which is probably what I'd go with, since I could make it look a bit like our school's dresses. Of course, we'd still need ghillies and some sort of headband or tiara.

What's funny about all this is that we're not even very Irish.

To Every Thing There Is a Season

2007-09-17T06:10:00.000-07:00

It's time to admit to myself that I'm not going to get around to sewing up all of the summer clothing I had planned. I've put away the fabric piles, and started thinking about fall sewing.

The kids and I all need new capris and pants, having outgrown last year's wardrobe (I seem to be having a horizontal growth spurt).

But the first item on the seasonal checklist is Birthday Sewing. And this year that means making items for American Girls dolls.

So far Kirsten has a new dress:

I wasn't so sure about elasticized sleeves for Kirsten, but I looked over the birthday dress from American Girl and realized that they implied drawstrings for the short sleeves.

After I finished this dress I found some tiny pink checked gingham and some tiny white ric rac. I've been considering making the birthday dress, but, really, does Kirsten want a knock off?

To make the above dress I used Joan Hind's Sew the Essential Wardrobe for 18-Inch Dolls. I sort of used the cover dress. Except the skirt of the cover dress was too full, and the collar was all wrong, and I wanted to line the bodice, and I thought the skirt opening could be done better than shown in the book, and skirt side seams looked more attractive. And probably some other stuff I'm forgetting. But, the book was inspirational, and gave me a jumping-off point. And it took less than a day to zip together, from tracing out the pattern to sewing on the daisy trim around the hem and neck (which really stinks to sew on, by the way, either by hand or machine).

This dress was for one child who likes to celebrate her Swedish heritagevia Kirsten. Her sister found some fake daisies and made someting like Kirsten's birthday headdress.

As a matter of fact, her sister's birthday is coming up soon, too. Expectations are running high: "Mommy, I think you could make Kit's birthday dress or school jumper -- they look pretty easy." Umm, no, they look pretty freakin' impossible to me. But I think I can manage some sort of jumper.

September is birthday season here. No doubt about it.

Eight Random Things

2007-09-14T05:17:00.000-07:00

Kristen at A Day in the Life tagged me to write 8 random things about myself.

1. This is great because my natural tendency is to ramble on and on without making much sense. Proof of this:

You're Ulysses!

by James Joyce

Most people are convinced that you don't make any sense, but compared
to what else you could say, what you're saying now makes tons of sense. What people do
understand about you is your vulgarity, which has convinced people that you are at once
brilliant and repugnant. Meanwhile you are content to wander around aimlessly, taking in
the sights and sounds of the city. What you see is vast, almost limitless, and brings you
additional fame. When no one is looking, you dream of being a Greek folk hero.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

So, blurting out 8 random things is right up my alley. Although they're more likely to be vulgar than brilliant. And as for repugnant, well, decide for yourself. I certainly don't have a clue what you find repugnant. Although I suspect if I told you about the time I ... oh never mind, I'm almost positive you'd find that anecdote distasteful.

Hat tip to Tammy for the quiz.

2. I would've done this meme yesterday morning, but I always mop the kitchen floor on Thursday mornings after MrV leaves for work and before the kids get up. I play NPR on the radio, and have some quiet time to myself scrubbing away. Afterwards, if the kids are still asleep, I do a yoga tape; generally I choose a tape by Rodney Yee or Baron Baptiste, but sometime Shiva Rea.

3. Morning is my favorite time of day. The world seems ripe with possibilities in the morning.

4. York Peppermint Patties are my current favorite form of chocolate. I keep them in the refrigerator.

5. At one time I was vegetarian, and yes, even vegan for a brief stint. Now I'm not.

6. When I walk around the neighborhood I think about all the secrets the houses seem to hold -- all the joys and sorrows that I can't even begin to guess at. Lately I've been thinking the same thing about blogs I pass through reading -- what joys and sorrows are hidden in the heart of the writer? And who am I to judge the tiny glimpse I do see, given how much is hidden from view?

7. I tend to think most people are about the same level of smart as am I. And I tend to be startled when I discover that I'm often wrong about that. Then again, I like to present myself to the world as shallow and dippy, because then people don't have annoying expectations of me. I wonder if some of the people I think are shallow and dippy are doing the exact same thing.

(Okay, I need to add something here -- plenty of people startle me by being so much smarter than me that it sort of makes me dizzy to think about. It's like realizing that you're blind to something others can see -- other people have such comprehension and intelligence about things I just do. not. get. So, the point is that I tend assume that everyone is exactly like me, and I'm always surprised when I discover they aren't. You'd think I'd catch on. But I don't.)

8. I really, really hate to shop. Having to make a decision to purchase one thing and not-purchase another just paralyzes me. It's sort of the same feeling as trying to decide who to tag with a meme versus who to not-tag. So, I tend to avoid shopping and tagging.

Thanks, Kristen, for giving me the opportunity to aimlessly babble. I love, love, love this type of meme, and would do it weekly. Except I don't like reading random bullet-point stuff like this on a regular basis (I was just reading a Thomas Sowell Random Thoughts column this morning and thinking how much I dislike that writing style since the author never develops any of the ideas) , so then I'd hate reading my own blog. And, you know, that just seems so very wrong, to write a blog you wouldn't want to read yourself. Not that I read my blog. Who has time? I need to read all of your blogs! Including your 8 Random Things, because in small doses it's lots of fun!

Tuesday Teatime

2007-09-12T05:11:00.000-07:00

This week's teatime shows just how easy having a weekly teatime can be.

While grocery shopping I picked up a package of creme filled wafer cookies. I think those wafer cookies are sort of vile, but the kids thought they were a great treat, and I had great hopes that I wouldn't eat the entire package myself (cookies are a great weakness of mine). I also picked up a bottle of lemonade.

And while at the library I picked up a copy of When We Were Very Young by A.A. Milne. It's a wonderful little book, and we should probably own a copy, but we don't. The library had several copies.

And, then, when we were ready to have teatime yesterday afternoon we decided it was a beautiful day and we should be outside. An outdoor teatime had an added advantage as it meant we didn't have to clean off the dining room table.

I took a blanket out to the playset, and spread it out on the platform up at the top of the slide. I also carried the book, the napkins, and the package of cookies. The kids followed with the lemonade and non-breakable cups.

As they settled in I read the introduction to the book. Then I read various poems at random.

After about 20 minutes of reading and chatting, we decided we had had enough. We picked up various items, slid down the slide, and carried them into the house. I then mowed the lawn while the kids attended to some other activities they had wanted to accomplish.

Tuesday teatime can be so very easy. Or it can be quite elaborate. And it's lots of fun to mix it up and vary the type you have, along with varying the poetry. You could even have one today!

Sshhh, I'm Trying to Read

2007-09-10T04:48:00.000-07:00

I rarely, if ever, read the popular trendy books that everyone is reading. So it's sort of surprising to me that I placed a library hold on Rob Gifford's China Road as soon as I heard about it. It's a great book; Gifford's writing is engaging, and he breaks down his complex subject into digestible bits. Unfortunately, I know that others are in line behind me at the library, and I won't be able to renew it. Right now I seem to be reading it just to get it read by the due date, rather than reading it for the joy of reading.

Also, for all of his talk about forces that shape China, he doesn't talk much about dirt. Oh, sure, he mentions loess midway through, but he doesn't really ponder the significance of the matter. It's a good thing I have David Montgomery's Dirt: the Erosion of Civilizations.

Ah, Dirt. Montgomery's book is so good that I feel guilty reading it. Who knew dirt could be so fascinating? Actually, I enjoyed soil science back in college (the fact that I tended to fall asleep during lecture was strictly because the class was right after lunch and the room was warm, you know). I mean, I wasn't hardcore about it -- I drew the line at attending soil judging contests, which I considered a little over the top insofar as dirt-appreciation goes (although, really, I think I'd kick butt at one). Actually, you don't have to be a dirt-o-phile (dirthead?) to enjoy this book. A history buff would find it fascinating, as it gives a new look at the rise and fall of civilizations.

And, of course, when not reading up on China and/or dirt, I'm pulling out a copy of Eric Franklin's Conditioning for Dance along with some theraband knockoffs from Target. This is a book you don't so much read as experience. I work on the exercises myself, then share them with the kids as ways to dance with more ease. My interest in the subject was piqued by the amazing dance kinesiology posts at Taoknitter. I get such a thrill everytime my bloglines page shows that she's posted something new -- she's as exciting as, well, as dirt! I love to soak up the information I'm finding on how the body moves, and how to support children as they learn to move in ways dictated by dance or sports.

The above are all library books, being read with the tyranny of the due date in mind. The books I actually own tend to get shoved to the bottom of the stack. For example, I had originally gotten Enzymes for Autism and Other Neurologiacl Conditions through Interlibrary Loan; I hurried right through the book since it had large NO RENEWALS stamped all over it. And then I bought me own copy. I'm re-reading it now, after which I will loan it out to others that have expressed interest in the subject. Except, you know, there's no due date on it, so I don't have a deadline for finishing it. Which is a shame, because it's a life-changing book that I really should finish up and loan out.

Oh, and should I mention Ani's Raw Food Kitchen?. It's a really creative un-cook-book. I mean, once you get over how many trees were destroyed to fill the pages with photos of Ani, and once you get over the incredibly rambling writing style, and once you get over your hang up that a 100 percent raw vegan diet is deeply flawed, well then, you can enjoy the book. Raw cooks have some pretty creative food prep ideas, and Ani has some of the best of the lot.

I'm not counting in this list the various books our Sunday School has been studying, given that I never finished the last one (Ortberg's If You Want to Walk on Water) and haven't started the next one (Hybel's Too Busy Not to Pray). And, frankly, as I was starting to type that sentence my computer crashed, leaving me to ponder that maybe I'd get more reading done if I actually opened the books instead of sitting here writing about them. Must. Go. Read.

Homeschooling When You're Too Tired to Think

2007-09-05T06:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we were tired and dull. Well, often we are dull, and tired happens, too, but we were exceptionally tired and dull after a busy weekend.

But we still need to learn stuff, by golly! Or, at least be able to write something educational down in our log book.

So.

Up in the morning, breakfast and a read aloud. Then head out to The Butterfly House. The Butterfly House has free admission for county residents on the morning of the first Tuesday of the month. They don't advertise this anywhere that I know of, and, frankly, I'm not sure of the exact hours it happens. But we take advantage of it whenever possible.

We looked over the various insects and arachnids on display in the entrance. My disaster-obsessed child has now turned her attention to brown recluse spiders, so we spent some time at that display; too bad the spider was being so, you know, reclusive.

Then on in to the actual butterfly house. It was a sunny day, and the butterflies were very active. We, on the other hand, were not active at all. I think the bromeliads were livelier than our group. As I saw the other moms busily engaging their children and doing stuff to make it educational, I felt that we were sort of zen in our calm acceptance of the butterflies flitting around us. Sometimes they landed on us. We were one with the scenery. We were ... tired.

On the way out, we stopped at the gift shop to pick up some chocolate covered ants. Scientific investigation at its finest! Comments from the back seat: "They just taste like chocolate, but the antennae prickle on your tongue," and "You can sort of feel the exoskeleton in your throat." We made it home without anyone barfing, including me (I chose not to indulge in this treat).

Lunch, and another read aloud. Then, yes, it's time for RETURN OF TUESDAY TEATIME.

Last spring we drifted away from Tuesday Teatimes, mostly because of Tuesday afternoon piano lessons. We have now moved piano lessons to another day. Why didn't we move Teatime to another day last spring? Well, for one thing, we liked the alliteration of Tuesday Teatime. Plus, we were busy pretty much every other afternoon, sigh.

The kids set up the teatime. This involved selecting a tablecloth and napkins, getting out plates and glasses, and decorating the table with a candle and fake insects:

Kid2 is decorating her cupcakes with frosting-in-a-tube, making ladybugs.

We had some mini cupcakes from Trader Joes, and some pink lemonade. Kid2 and I read out of Joyful Noise, Paul Fleischman's wonderful book of insect-themed poetry written to be read aloud by 2 people. She thought reading the poems aloud together was great fun; we'll probably continue to read these poems for the rest of the week.

Afterwards someone apparently thought it would be amusing to put doublestick tape on the insects and post them at various places throughout the house; last night I found a large roach crawling up the wall of the hallway (fairly startling, as the roach is the most lifelike of the batch) and this morning there was a gigantic unidentifiable something next to the light switch in the basement. Ahem. All you moms out there with all boys take note: having girls doesn't mean you get off scott-free from this sort of thing, although there's probably less of it going on in our house than in yours.

That night as we brushed teeth we found a few little black spots ... ants, perhaps, had stuck to the teeth all day? Who knows. All-in-all, it was an interesting day.

Note to Self: Turning a Heel and Attending a Feis Simultaneously Doesn't Work

2007-09-03T18:32:00.000-07:00

Because I loose my place in both the heel and the feis.

We stayed at the Hyatt in downtown Kansas City. On the one hand, they goofed up our reservation regarding the roll-away bed and how many people would be staying in the room (hotels always goof up the roll-away, so we had brought our own aerobed). On the other hand, they had ESCALATORS! Right there near the check-in desk! So, like, when Mom is checking in, you can run over and ride up and down them several times!

The feis was at the Westin, which is connected to the Hyatt via a walkway. On Friday night we checked into the feis, rode the Westin escalators a few times, and visited the Irish Festival. We watched The Fuchsia Band, who we enjoyed (we spent most of the weekend singing their song Ceili Band ... except the only words we could remember were "we're a Ceili Band", so it was a bit monotonous). Overall, though, the event served to remind us that we really don't like street fairs that much. Oh well. The Hyatt gave out complimentary tickets to the Festival, so it wasn't as though we had spent out money on it. And the Festival did have a knitting contest -- the kids thought I should enter it. I didn't feel like messing with it, though. Maybe another year.

The feis itself was on Saturday, and was fun. I liked the layout -- it was easy to find everything (except the restrooms). The feis didn't charge for spectators, which was nice since many of us had invited Kansas City relatives to come see our kids compete. We were on stage E and stage F, along with all the other First Feis, Beginner 1, Beginner 2 and Novice. The room for stage E was a bit small, considering the number of spectators. I felt like I barely had room to knit

I was working on transforming August's UFO Resurrection sock into something I might actually finish knitting and perhaps even wear. I'm making up the pattern as I go along. So far this hasn't been the easiest project to carry along -- I seem to have lost one of the needles down the side of Mrs. Piano Teacher's chair last week, and making up a heel whilst simultaneously keeping track of where we are in the feis schedule really did. not. work. Of course, it didn't help that the Slip Jig competition went on forever, partially because one of the dancers threw up at the check-in station (I never did hear whether it was just nerves or what, let alone the answer to the primal question of did it get on her dress?).

Stage F was in a larger room, and blessedly cool. It was also right next to the hotel concessions. Grandma and Grandpa spent most of their time there.

Other thoughts on the feis: My older daughter was mortified that they were to sit in chairs in the waiting area, as she felt it crushed her dress. I liked that they clearly announced when the lunch break would be. I liked how caring the adjudicators were, pausing to publicly congratulate all the First Feis contestants for getting up and dancing (apparently one little boy on stage F was so distraught before dancing that the adjudicator went over to him and spent a few moments soothing him), and generally make sure the Beginners had a chance to have fun and do their best. They still managed to briskly wrap up the competitions we were involved in (in spite of the vomiting incident) by lunch time.

We collected our awards (some of which the sock is wearing in the above picture -- no, the sock didn't win a 2nd and 3rd, but that's part of our collection). I was impressed that the kids placed so well, considering that they had been up late riding escalators rather than practicing and/or getting a good night's sleep.

We spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying downtown Kansas City with some relatives, then swimming in the hotel pool, riding escalators, and watching the Irish Fest fireworks.

Sunday we checked out of the hotel, went to church with relatives, then over to my sister-in-law's house. We headed home later in the afternoon; I spent the ride undoing most of the knitting I'd done at the feis, then re-knitting it.

We were exhausted Monday morning, but had tickets for the Cardinal's game. Well, MrV and I had tickets. The kids went to a relative's house (which has a pool) here in St. Louis. I gotta tell you, these were Amazingly Good Seats, and if I had a camera phone I would've been calling Weaver to show her, since I know she would've been impressed. Mostly, though, I wanted to take a nap, and the game went downhill fast. Gees. You'd think the Cardinals had been up all night riding escalators or something.

So we have now Travelled to a Feis. And we had fun doing it. This puts us in the realm of hardcore Irish Dance families. Or maybe it's just that we like to ride escalators.

Just dropping by to say "hey"...

2007-08-30T11:15:00.000-07:00

Note: this entry has been IMPROVED! It now has links to info about feising, for those who might wonder what I'm prattling on about. Irish dance competitions are sort of like a cult; it's hard to explain to an outsider. Or maybe it's just hard to explain to me, since I'm still not entirely sure why we feis. Anyway, if you have a burning desire to learn more, now you have some links.

I've had ideas for "real" blog posts, but no time to type them out.

At the moment we're getting ready for another feis.

Errand running is completed, I think. We now have a new camp stool ($4.98 in the Walmart hunting department; it has a camo look to it) so Kid1 can sit down without fear of crushing the stiffening in her dress. We have new glue sticks to glue socks onto legs, since Kid2 can never get her old glue stick open (I think it got glued shut in the excitement of July's feis). We have non-messy snacks. We have a printout of our stage assignments with our dances highlighted, thanks to the aid of a more experienced mom who assured me the assignments really and truly were on Feisworx (I was looking on the wrong page -- oops). We have boatloads of bobbypins for our dancer who will wear a wig. We have a new jar of setting gel for our dancer who will have to suffer through having her hair set on spikes once again, although she really, really, really wants a wig bad (the other wig was given to us, else we wouldn't even have it).

(Tips for attending feiseanna here, although you can't take flash pictures either, so I'm not sure what's up with saying you can. Oh, wait,this is better. Shoot, I wish I could find one with pictures, so you could see the mayhem of hundreds of curly-haired girls running amok. Frankly, this list is my favorite, buty it maybe has too many inside jokes.)

Kid1 is polishing her ghillies. Kid2 is on notice that she needs to practice her dances with the wig on, so she doesn't freak out about wearing it. I need to mow the lawn and vacuum, just because life goes on whether we're at a feis or not.

I can't believe there are families who go to feiseanna pretty much every weekend. Yeesh. Once a month is more than enough for me. How did I get sucked into this lifestyle?

Cool Enough to Try On Sahara

2007-08-26T08:21:00.000-07:00

Yes, the temperatures have finally dropped to the point we can open the windows and listen to the neighbor call for her cats incessantly. (She seems to enjoy letting them out at night, then getting all wound up that they aren't waiting by the door to be let in next morning. Phase 2 of this scenario will be when she comes over later this morning and announces she's sure one of the has been eaten by a coyote. She must enjoy this, right? because she does it, oh, maybe once a week at least.)

And I quickly donned Sahara for a photo:

The photo was snapped quickly, too, as I was working between sneezes and nose-blowing (see those tissues in easy reach?) and coughing fits.

I think the t-shirt I have under it is rumpled, thus some of the lumps down the back. I think I have no interest in wearing a sleeveless, close-fitting top at this time of year. I think I have enough yarn to make some sleeves. I think the bottom looks sort of wonky in this picture, possibly because it IS sort of wonky. I think that having knit it top-down doesn't make a huge difference in my decision to maybe redo the bottom, since I am not averse to cutting the bottom off of a sweater knit bottom-up and redoing it (been there, done that). I think the entire "top-down means you can try it on as you go" was sort of useless given the neckline of this thing, since it was hard to judge fit until the neckline was finished.

Mostly I think I shouldn't critique sweaters while my neurons are clogged with snot. I am maybe not in my brightest, most positive mood today.

Knit in Classic Silk by Classic Elite Yarns. No idea how many balls it took since I have no idea how many I had to begin with.

Fever

2007-08-24T05:21:00.000-07:00

Another insight into our family life: if I sign us up for homeschool classes at the Science Center, someone in our family will develop a fever that day. Every. Single. Time.

This is made more memorable by the Science Center policy of paying in advance (probably to cut down on the no-shows). They need payment for every person who will be in a classroom, not just the students. In other words, if you were to have a child that is going to freak out being in a class with a bunch of strangers without a parent or older sibling around so you decide to go ahead and sit in the back of the classroom not really participating, just sort of existing (even though this means you miss out on the free Segway rides homeschool parents are offered while waiting for their child) you have to pay for that. Which means if your family doesn't show up, you've lost even more money.

We like to rotate who gets sick, instead of having the same person get sick each time. This time it was Kid1. If it is possible for an illness to have an accompanying fever, she will develop one. As a matter of fact, if whatever is going around usually has an accompanying fever, she will develop a higher one that most people. It's just the way her body works.

After living with her for years, it now seems like an interesting phenomenon. It wasn't always something I would've called "interesting", though. When she was an infant she gave us our first Scary Moment in Parenting when she had a febrile seizure. After that I found myself reading a lot about fever in children, particularly in books like The Holistic Pediatrician by Kathi J. Kemper, MD (I remember sitting beside the bed reading the passage on fever over and over during the night one night while Kid1 tossed and turned beside me), Take Charge of Your Child's Health by George Wootan, and Naturally Healthy Babies and Children by Aviva Jill Romm (who I've often wished would come take care of me when I'm sick).

Having absorbed the message in those books, I view occasional high temps as a natural part of life. We rarely use antipyretics such as ibuprofen and acetaminophen. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty shocked when I hear someone casually comment, "I realized my child had a fever, so I gave him/her some Tylenol". It seems to me a knee-jerk response to a natural immune function. The important things for the child are rest and plenty of liquids.

Overall, fevers aren't scary around here anymore, just exasperating when they always pop up for certain events. By the way, it's my turn next to get sick when we plan a trip to the Science Center. Just saying.

More about childhood fevers here and here. And, yoohoo, yes, I know there are exceptions when high temps do need to be brought down. That's why God gave us brains, so we can discern those times.

(This post written in part so I'm less inclined to write caustic comments when I read on blogs or discussion boards that parents are pumping their kids full of antipyretics. I've now said my piece on fevers, so I can more easily keep my mouth shut when others blurt out things I consider, ummm, less well-informed on this subject. I'm trying to think of a label for this sort of post, because there are some other things I read and hear regularly that bug the snot out of me, and I really and truly do wish to be tactful and polite, but, criminy, what the heck are people thinking when they do some of this stuff. I know we're all trying to do the best for our kids with the information we've got, but I think sometimes people don't have the best info. Suggestions? )

Ruminating on the odd places life takes us ...

2007-08-23T07:11:00.000-07:00

I was just out putting a sprinkler in our backyard when I heard the phone ring. MrV had found this news report, and thought the 4th photo down on the left side looked like our old neighborhood (the one we were living in 2 years ago today).

I'm not so sure -- I talked to a former neighbor just yesterday morning, and she said the water was up over the side street, but hadn't actually come over the section of street we lived on. Of course, that was 6 inches ago, I think, so who knows.

There have been days I've regretted moving away from small town America. Life in big town America seems so much more complex, y'know? But right now my dry little city neighborhood feels pretty cozy.

RightStart Geometry

2007-08-22T05:18:00.000-07:00

The continuing saga of our adventures using RightStart Geometry and RightStart B. I have an 11yo and a 7yo who have average math ability.The 11yo has done Miquon, Singapore, RightStart Transitions, Level D and Level E; RightStart has saved her from a life a math phobia.

I try to update our adventures on Tuesdays, although sometimes it doesn’t get done until Wednesday. And sometimes we really haven’t done that much math, so I skip it entirely.

RightStart Geometry:

(I think we have skipped some lessons here in my chronicle of our time with RightStart. I suspect Kid1 did them last June and I never got around to commenting on them.)

Lesson131 Basic Trigonometry

Day one:

I am not prepared to be “back to school”, but Kid1 has decided to bustle around doing school this morning. Her resolve to get into the school groove starts to crumble as she reads through the RightStart explanation of trigonometry. I read through it -- it’s thorough and succinct. I help her through the first problem, finding sine, cosine and tangent of a 45 degree right triangle, showing my work on the chalkboard (I love doing math on a chalkboard -- whiteboards just don’t cut it for the tactile satisfaction). Her eyes are glazed, she keeps asking why, as in why the heck would anyone DO this? I suggest we drop it for today and try a different approach tomorrow.

Day two:

I have googled various websites on the uses of trigonometry, trying to choose ones that will interest her. She is unimpressed. Next we get out Zaccaro’s Challenge Math and read through the chapter on trigonometry in it. I point out the exciting concept that triangles can be different sizes yet have the same ratio of opposite side/adjacent side. She rolls her eyes at this -- it is such old news. But she starts to realize that this isn’t some weird new branch of math someone dreamed up just to torment innocent young students -- this is a logical outgrowth of things she already knows.

We look at a few of the word problems in Challenge Math but decide against doing them. I like the way RightStart approaches trig better, mostly because it’s the way I learned trig many years ago.

Day three:

Ready to tackle the RightStart worksheet again. We work through the sine, cosine and tangent of a 30-60 triangle together, using the chalkboard. Then she starts filling the The Chart -- it’s a chart of sine, cosine and tangent of 5 degrees, 10 degrees, 15 degrees, etc. on up to 85 degrees. She is to measure triangles on the second worksheet, then use her measurements for her calculations. No indication is given whether it would be better to measure in metric or inches, but she decides metric would be more accurate.

I am on alert, since I’ve noticed that this business of measuring can turn into disaster -- sometimes the reproduction of the worksheets is a scootchy bit off, leading to different interpretations of length. Since she’s going to be using millimeters to calculate, she could rapidly end up with an answer that’s fairly different from what it should be (especially since she’s to use the table she’s making for the next lesson). We hit on a strategy -- first of all, I look at the answer sheet and discover that every hypotenus is 10 centimeters. Aha -- I figured there would be some constant somewhere, since that’s the way elementary math books tend to work. Plus “10” is easy to divide by, so it makes oodles of sense that every hypotenus would be ten.

I keep the answer sheet out. She measures the sides of each triangle, then tells me what she gets for the measurement. I tell her what the answer sheet says. We quickly ponder the difference (can she see why they called it what they did?), then she uses the “official measure” for her calculations. I draw traingles on the chalkboard for her and label the angles and sides with A,B,C,a,b,c. She soon sees the patterns that are forming with her answers (which is why it’s so cool to do this exercise, and why I wanted to do it instead of just doing the Chalenge Math -- you can discover the relationships between sine, cosine and tangents of the various angles as you calculate them).

The lesson took 3 days and plenty of parental involvement, but in the end she is confident that trigonometry is something she can deal with.

Lesson 132 Solving Trig Problems

Kid1 zips through this lesson, using the chart of trig ratios from lesson 131. She feels good about this.

The discussion of Problem 1 comments that “your answer may not quite agree with the solution. Trig ratios cannot be calculated very accurately by measuring as you did.” Umm, I feel like we’ve been caught cheating on yesterday’s chart!

Lesson 133 Comparing Calculators

MrV’s scientific calculator uses Reverse Polish Notation, so I decide to spring for the calculator specified in the book instead of making do with his. I bought our Casio fx300MS from Amazon since our local Target didn’t have it and I was able to get free shipping (driving around town looking for one was going to use up as much gas as the price differential).

It looks rather like a Star Trek data pad, which makes it a very satisfying addition to our household. The kids quickly figured out how to use it. Kid1 didn’t make it all the way through the worksheet, though, as she started feeling woozy, heralding a fever. She'll get back to this lesson after she recovers.

UFO Resurrection for August

2007-08-17T05:25:00.000-07:00

Frankly, the 105F temperature has sucked away my will to live, let alone my interest in knitting. And my UnFinished Object pile struck me as particularly icky this month; it appeared to me the best thing for it was to pitch the entire pile in the trash bin. Then again, everything has been striking me as particularly icky this month and in need of pitching in the trash -- see above comment about temperature.

But we have reached a moment of crisis -- we are to go to a High School Musical 2 party tonight, and I need some knitting to take along. And I have nothing "current" (as opposed to "icky unfinished object") on the needles.** And heaven forbid I face an evening of watching a movie with nothing to do but sit and watch the movie. That just seems so ... warped.

(Aside: Actually, we had never seen the original High School Musical until last night, when we watched it on the Disney Channel in preparation for tonight's event. We are so out of touch with current popular culture. Sigh.)

(Aside to the above aside: We are so out of touch with current culture that when the kids are playing dolls I overhear the dolls being made to say things like: "I'm calling my boyfriend on my cell phone. My boyfriend is Rafael Nadal. We're secretly engaged." And while I'm impressed that they came up with a male figure who isn't part of Star Trek or Star Wars, I can't help but think that choosing Rafael Nadal over someone a little more mainstream like, say, Zac Efron is a bit odd.

Then again, these are kids who have a mom who's currently panicking about what knitting to take to a movie, so maybe I shouldn't be too surprised. Our family is always on a different page than everybody else. Sometimes we're not even in the same book)

So I dragged out the box of sock yarn to spend some time in quiet contemplation. And I discovered this:

I was making a Caeser's Check mosaic sock out of Lorna's Laces Bee Stripe with Lorna's Laces black for my dad, Purdue fan extraordinaire (Purdue's colors are gold and black, in case any readers are heathen enough to not know the school colors of all the Big 10 schools). The pattern is from Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks. I really like mosaic knitting, and I think that's a nifty looking sock-start there BUT the black yarn with the black-and-gold yarn was Too Much Black to Knit This Pattern -- I needed high beam lights to keep track of where I was in the mosaic pattern. So I had ripped out the needles and shoved it in the bag.

(I'm glad I ripped out the needles, else I might be tempted to start knitting it again ... and in about 2 more inches I'd be hating myself.)

Ooooooh, if I rip this up, I could start a pair of socks from the Bee Stripe with black ribbing, toe and heel ... just in time for football season, too. I could make them for me. Or my dad. Or MrV. Or, heck, my mom would probably like a pair of handknit socks.

So, still some details to hammer out, like what pattern, and for whom. And still the perilous journey to the bottomless pit of needles to find appropriate tools. But I think I'll be set to watch Zac Efron tonight; and since Rafael Nadal has withdrawn from Cincinnati, Zac is where it's at for now.

**Sahara is totally knit and blocked. No pic, though, since if I put it on touches my skin, and in this weather I need loose clothing or else I start frantically clawing the offending garment.

Sensitive to the Subtle Signs That the Kids Are Ready to Start School

2007-08-14T04:42:00.000-07:00

I got out of the shower yesterday morning and heard voices downstairs. Voices that were not my children or Jim Weiss (we have a lot of Jim Weiss audio books, so hearing his voice around the house is pretty normal). As I reached the stairs I realized it was ... Rosetta Stone.

Yes, Kid1 had popped Rosetta Stone Spanish into the computer and was contemplating whether the hands and eyes were opened or closed. When I got downstairs she finished up and asked if I could read her a list of spelling words. After fumbling through Spelling Power to figure out where we had left off when we abruptly lost interest last spring, I read a list. She did well with it, then moved on to Mavis Beacon typing.

I returned to my grousing that I'd never had a proper summer vacation -- days spent lazing at the pool or watching Doris Day movies without a care in the world -- and generally fumbling around the kitchen in a Monday morning haze. And she popped back into the room to ask if I remembered where she'd left off in the Latin book.

"Didn't you have some work or something you were sticking in a notebook somewhere? Couldn't you look at it and sort of figure out where you are?" (Couldn't you not expect me to have a clue?)

"Oh, yes, it's the blue notebook. Could you hand it to me, please? The blue one is for Latin, not the purple. Hand me the blue one, please."

Yeesh, I'm trying to remember what I usually do on Monday morning to keep the household running, and she's expecting me to remember what the Latin notebook looks like? Give me a break.

After Latin the perky let's-get-going-on-school came to a halt when she got out RightStart Geometry. After reminding me several times that she was going to need a scientific calculator soon ("It's only 2 more lessons, so I'll need it later this week. I think I saw some at Office Depot. Do you think you could go there in the next couple of days?") she plunged into the next lesson. Trigonometry.

And came to a screeching halt.

"Mommy, I think I need some help"

and

"Why do I have to know this?"

Oh, joy of sine, cosine, and tangent. I had a wonderful teacher for trig. He was inspiring. The best math teacher I ever had. He lead us into trigonometry as though we were explorers working together to chart a new country. I could draw those waves in my sleep, we studied it so thoroughly. How do I convey this to my child?

We set the book aside. I told her we'd try a different approach on a different day. I'm not ready for this yet -- the entire morning caught me by surprise, and an impromptu discussion of Why Trig Is Cool was beyond me.

Like it or not, we seem to be back to school in our homeschool.

Black Is Not My Color and Helmet Liners Are Not My Style

2007-08-13T05:46:00.000-07:00

Ready to send off to 5 Element Knitter:

where it will be sent to someone who values functionality over looks.

Knit in Cascade 220 Superwash, with quite a little pile of yarn left over from the skein. I went down a needle size, assuming that my guage would be massively larger than that called for in the patterm (I'm a loose knitter). The liner still fits my large head quite nicely, so I think the size came out okay.

(I just re-read that last sentence, and it sounds as though I have several heads I tried it on. "Oh, look, it fits on my LARGE head, but on my smaller one it's a bit loose!" No, I'm not related to Zaphod Beeblebrox. I'm just too tired and hazy to figure out better syntax.)

Knitting Needles Revealed

2007-08-07T05:52:00.000-07:00

Or, "Why I Stay Out of Needle Organization Discussions" (given that I have maybe a few more knitting needles than many knitters)

The double points are fairly easy to deal with. Some are missing from the shot, of course. I can think of at least 4 sets stuck in projects around and about the house. And I KNOW I have several sets of size 3 double points, so who knows where the rest of those are.

The circulars are a little tougher. There are at least 5-6 circs not pictured, currently at work on projects. This number (5-6 missing) assumes I remember what projects I have currently "on the needles", which is, of course, poppycock. I often open a canvas bag and discover some knitted thing taking shape (sometimes I have no idea what it was I was working on; like, there's this pink thing in the closet that I'm really puzzled by. What was it supposed to be?).

The Addis and Crystal Palace are definitely mine; the large ziplocs with marker definitely Grandma's. Who knows who bought the rest.

I store all of the needles in a large plastic tub. The double points and circulars form the upper layer. After digging through those packages, things get sort of odd. We have the bag of a dozen stitch holders (Grandma aparently believed you could never have too many stitch holders), the bag of miscellaneous cable needles and needle-sizers, and then the black moire taffeta needle holder:

Oh, hey, there are some more double points in there! How about that! The needle holder belonged to someone else, who either died or lost interest in knitting (is there a difference?). The needle case was then given to Grandma, who gave it to me. It's very nice, and can hold about as many needles size 1-6 as most knitters would ever need, except for the lack of space for circulars.

But, of course, most of my single point needles don't fit in it:

This is the bottom layer of the plastic tub. And, yes, there are some missing from the shot due to their obligations with knitting projects in my closet or on the nightstand or ... somewhere. The ones in the rubber band are the latest installment from Grandma.

(Note the rogue wooden crochet hooks that missed the crochet hook photo shoot a few days ago. They are decades old; I'm not sure if they were Grandma's or Great-Grandma's.)

I am so beyond the concept of storing needles artfully in a vase

I was going to get a better shot of this, and I was thinking about lining them up end to end and seeing how far they'd stretch, but then I realized that my neighbor was in her yard, watching me kneeling in the ivy taking pictures of 50 pairs of knitting needles whilst still clad in my jammies. Suddenly my creative flow screetched to a halt. But you can click on for a close up, if you'd like. And, yes, I did take a quick count of the needles themselves, and there are 100 needles there.

Recent Knitting

2007-08-06T05:19:00.000-07:00

My UFO Resurrection sweater for July made great progress during the past month:

The sleeveless version of Sahara, knit in Classic Elite's Classic Silk. I found the rest of the yarn I was using, I seem to be knitting it in the same size I had planned. All I have left to do is pick up the stitches for the neck, then block. The problem is that "pick up the stitches for the neck" business, as this requires getting out a longer circular needle than the one I used to pick up and knit around the armholes. And going and getting the correct needle out? Well, let's just say the needle-control situation here is totally lacking. It's overwhelming. It's a mess.

(By the way, I also have fabric for a coordinating skirt, so now I have an entire Unfinished Outfit piled up here!)

So instead of dealing with finding the correct needle, I cast on something else, something using easy-to-locate needles:

A helmet liner. Except now I'm to the point that I need to switch to double points. Which means getting out needles. Which I really, really do not want to have to deal with.

I'd rather go mow the lawn in the 100F heat, then go swimming.

Aaahhh! At Last I Have a Chance to Put My Feet Up

2007-08-05T14:44:00.001-07:00

Yes, the houseguest is on his way home, and I have a few moments to relax before starting to prepare for the next batch later this week. Houseguest A was certainly a lively guest. Within about 24 hours of arrival he had re-injured his eardrum (it had ruptured last week, a fact which he forgot about until after he dove deeply into the swimming pool and felt it "go") and lost a contact (a prescription of 5.5, which in contact-speak basically means "I cannot see without these").

How nice that in the midst of the mayhem I got this ultra-cool package from Irishgirlieknits:

featuring not only the lovely, soft socks (which, by the way, smell like my sock-knitting-friend's house, which is just a hoot), a bar of Ocean Mist soap from River Soap Co., a package of Soak to try, a cute little memo book to carry in my knitting bag which I can theoretically use to keep track of what I'm doing, Emperor Norton Sourdough Snacks, Notorious Sock Knitters bumper sticker, card with beach/knitting photo that she took herself (as we are now living in a landlocked state, beach pictures seem so exotic), and a mini-skein on a ring.

Close-up of socks in their former life before being torn away from their beach-going former life here. Okay, I don't know if these socks ever hit the beach, but the poor things are arriving in the nation's armpit in the midst of a heat-alert, with temperatures around 100F and a heat index even higher, and a relative humidity of instant-sweat-percent. It's the sort of weather that leaves you exhausted whenever you engage in activities like, oh, you know, blinking. It must be a comedown from their former life.

BUT, I will love, love, love them with all of my heart. I can't wait until it's cool enough to wear socks again.

In Which I Discover I Have the Coolest Sockapalooza Pal Ever

2007-08-04T12:10:00.000-07:00

I am up to my eyeballs in life right now. As a matter of fact, those eyeballs are starting to leak tears at random intervals due to sheer stress.

And I totally forgot to expect a sock package anytime soon.

And it came today and it is so cool beyond words. But no pics, because I have no time to mess with iPhoto and Blogger (they often don't like to play nicely together). You'll just have to trust me that the socks are perfect. Quote from Kid1: "I want socks exactly like that for Christmas." Hmmm, her feet are about the same size as mine, so I'm going to have to keep on eye on her to make sure these don't disappear from my sock drawer.

Pictures of the coolness will appear in a few days when (please oh please let it finally happen) I get a break.

But for now, just know that I am loving these new socks and soap and memo pad (which Kid2 is trying to claim) and chips and note about Irish dance! (the kids don't do the team dances, you're right).

Gotta go deal with ... stuff. But with a little bounce back in my step now!

Plans

2007-07-30T09:41:00.000-07:00

Okay, the general plan for this week was to have a few quiet days taking the kids to the pool, maybe getting a haircut, maybe making an appointment with an opthamologist, and generally recovering from the Big Stressful Event aluded to in my previous post (the BSE was actually the An Samhra Feis, about which more later).

Much staring at the wall was planned. Also, I'm starting to feel guilty about not planning out our next year of homeschooling, other than a vague idea to continue what we've been doing so far. It seems like I should be planning it down to the week, at least, if not down to the day. Other homeschoolers are posting their Big Plans, or at least mentioning that they have Big Plans. I am so very UnPlanned. Yikes!

But now my plan for my planning week has already been shot down, as I have discovered that we are having out of town visitors for much of the week.

In other words, I am apparently unable to even plan on planning.

Ah well.

The feis went well Saturday, as far as I could tell. We've only been to one feis before, back in February, so we don't have a huge feild of comparison. The one in February seemed like mayhem, but I think the first feis you ever walk into ALWAYS appears to be mayhem (plus that one had icky weather, and was the same weekend as the Mardi Gras parade nearby, which made parking tough, and meant many drinking parade-goers wearing Mardi Gras beads were wandering around outside the hotel, while hundreds of girls with those surrealistic curly wigs and gaudy dresses were wandering around inside the hotel, and, well, it was just mind boggling). We came away Saturday with some medals and some new friendships, which I think is a pretty good thing. Parking was bad, although I expected that, given the venue. Kid1 broke a bracket eating a cup of ice cream from the Cold Stone Creamery there, so that was pretty weird (another unplanned event -- a trip to the orthodontist this afternoon).

I still have reels playing in my head. Listening to 4 hours straight of Irish music will do that to you. I can't imagine what it's like to have to stay there all day for the later competitions. Let that be a warning to those of you considering Irish Dance as a hobby.

(A year ago I would've read this post and wondered what the heck a "feis" is. It's an Irish Dance contest. The world of Irish Dancing is very ... unique and unexpected. There were over 800 people entered in this feis; I saw maybe a dozen boys, and 3 adults amongst the competitors. The rest were girls, almost all of whom had The Hair and some variation of The Dress. You have to see it to believe it.)

Vacation Bible School

2007-07-27T07:41:00.000-07:00

This week has been VBS week here at our house. The kids are going, but I'm not. They've got some sort of space theme going, as you can see by this flying saucer that Kid2 made during craft time:

Why, yes, that IS the symbol for the Star Trek version of the Galactic Empire (the mirror universe that showed up in the original series and in Star Trek Enterprise; Kid2 knows it from the Enterprise series). An interesting choice for a Bible School craft. I found myself pondering which is more important: spreading the Gospel in the ruthless, assassination-prone Galactic Empire, or spreading the Gospel in the godless, New Agey Federation. But I'm not involved oin helping with VBS this year, so these deep ponderings will go undiscussed. (That piece of paper on the edge is covering her name, by the way -- it isn't some funky docking port.)

One weird quirk about VBS this year -- when I pull into the driveway after picking the kids up there's a doe standing in the neighbor's yard. The same doe, day after day. She just sort of stares at us, her mouth full of Stella D'Oro daylilies. Then she wanders off to check out the geraniums. I feel a little guilty for not scaring her off (the neighbor really likes those daylilies), but it's all so surreal that I find myself hesitating.

What I've been doing whilst children are learning about VBS-type stuff:

Day One: Browse in bookstore. Shop at Whole Foods without having to spend 15 minutes at gelato bar -- heck, I didn't even LOOK at the gelato bar. Purchase magazine and pastry for myself; sit at home with cat on my lap enjoying both.

Day Two: Sew. Complete pair of capri pants for Kid2 (amazing what you can get done with no interruptions). Read book from library. Eat Snap Pea Crisps.

Day Three: Sit at Midas in cold waiting room while brake pads are replaced. Alternate knitting and reading library book while waiting, waiting, waiting. This takes entire VBS time, but now my brakes are much more brakey, and not making that odd noise.

Day Four: Run errands relating to Big Stressful Event taking place Saturday (this is the event I've been dreading for about 4 months now; it's here, it's happening, and I'm about to throw up from nervous anticipation). Also, browse in bookstore more, and finally find new journal.

Day Five: Today! Blog! Clean house! Make lists of things to be done by Big-Stressful-Event-time tomorrow, as well as lists of things to take along.

VBS is over early today, so I must get moving. Blogging will probably become more regular after I recover from Big Stressful Event. I think I might even think about homeschooling again -- you know, start thinking about what we might do this coming year other than taking the car to be repaired, sewing, knitting and watching Star Trek.

That night I dreamt of seam rippers

2007-07-16T06:20:00.000-07:00

I was in a fabric store and saw a really FUN fabric -- polka dots! in pink and green and black! Fun! And could coordinate with, well, with pink or green or black!

Oh boy! What FUN pattern could I use to sew this up? How about something with a flounce, because nothing is quite so FUN as a flounce! Better yet, an asymmetrical flounce, because asymmetrical is not only FUN, but also whimsical. Ooooh, a FUN, whisical skirt ... I can hardly wait.

I traced out a skirt from Ottobre Woman 2/2007 -- design #13. And that flounce was hard to trace, by the way. I ended up using yellow highlighter on the original so I could follow the pattern lines on the Pattern Ease.

And I whipped up that FUN skirt.

(Still working on how to shoot a non-flash non-blurry picture in a somewhat dirty mirror, as you can see)

Oh. Oops. Just because the fabric and pattern are both FUN doesn't mean they should be used together. Even the cat looks as though she is rolling her eyes.

MrV commented that the higher swoop of the flounce looked like I had fabric bunched up in my undies. Which struck me as pretty funny. But, really, how can you wear a skirt in public after a comment like that? Also, this length makes my legs look fat. Also, I was sewing with the windows open whilst someone in this town was playing Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy at such a volume that not only did it flatten all the trees in a 5 mile radius, but it also lodged itself in the very fiber of this skirt so every time I look at it I hear the song in my head.

Well, what did I learn from this experience?

Invisible zippers are a heck of a lot easier to put in with an invisible zipper foot. Last time I tried one I used a regular zipper foot. It was not a good experience. This one pratically put itself in. I felt like I was cheating.

Putting in petersham at the waistband is a cinch, and does work well.

Ottobre skirt patterns have bigger fronts than backs. Its been ages since I sewed an American skirt pattern, but I vaguely remember that the backs are bigger than the fronts. I suppose this causes it to hang differently. Or perhaps European women are built differently. Next time, though, I will make the front smaller.

Also, having chosen the size based on my hip measure (per the Ottobre suggestion) this was huge in the waist. I deepened the darts, and added an extra set of darts in the back. Next time I will alter the waist before cutting out.

I have discovered an inner compulsion to finish items even though they don't look that great. I hemmed it and tacked the lining to the zipper after I realized I will probably never wear it.

And, most of all, I really really need to get a grip on visualizing what finished items are actually going to look like when put together and placed on my body.

(I really did dream of seam rippers after I made this. They were dancing around like the dishes in Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Amazingly enough, they were NOT dancing to Led Zeppelin.)