Tuesday, January 08, 2008

The Year begins

Here it is, Tuesday, and we're back into the swing of school. Saxon has been dumped in favor of Singapore, and the scholars are rejoicing. I think I know why it is that asking Filia to do three problems involving exponents results in three bad guesses, while asking her to do thirty of them results in 29 correct answers. Her brain was made dizzy by the Spirals of Saxon. I didn't enjoy having two children with 'math brains' (ie, they come up with accurate ways to solve problems that I, who tested into Calc III for college, have to wrinkle my brow to contemplate) getting less than 50% on weekly quizzes. We switched, and all is going well.

The knitting proceedeth apace. I am out of yarn for Filia's cardigan, and have ordered more. One half of a sleeve and a neck treatment are all that remain. Work has begun on the second Endpaper Mitt, but I've been spending more time staring at a monitor than knitting. I found a site that teaches HTML basics, and was caught at a weak moment (having spent some time trying to paste code into my blog for the 2008 Puritan Reading Challenge). After the schoolwork was done, I unleashed my children on it. Filius is happily designing a Dayton Flyer Unofficial Fan Page, and Filia has made some lovely buttons with the names of all her friends as options. Me, I'm still working on that image thing. (You can see how it's going with the photos on this post. It should be scary for a while, but I have hopes I'll be able to do a bit with them. Then again, they don't show up. Argh. Is it possible to simply paste an img src="http:..." into Blogger with < and > and have it work? If not, why not? Obviously, an hour of HTML is not helping enough.)

Endpaper Mitts
I've been asked to teach a class in 'advanced mittens with colorwork' for a local knitting store. Whee!!! But ... I've never taken a knitting class. If anyone has been in a class and has advice on what to do, or what not to do, please chime in.

And a closing quote from my new Book of Quotations:
Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues
We write in water.

Henry VIII (1613) act 4, sc. 2, 1.58

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love the quote. The mitten is sublime. And, I want to come to your reading party. I guess I am going to have to go out and hunt some used books.

Shan said...

Oh I do like that quote.

I've got my daughter starting Saxon (Grade 1) this Jan on the advice of her contact teacher...she loves it so far but finds it a little repetitive. I think choosing effective curriculum is the toughest part of this whole job, so far.

Pensguys said...

That's great about you teaching the class!

You might want to ask Zoomom. She teaches here.

Rachel said...

Just finishing a sock class at my LYS. Second project class I've taken.

I liked both teachers, but both taught differently.

First, very relaxed, easy pattern, opened up for questions after she explained the basics.

BUT

We always ran out of time at the end of class (3 total) and were rushed in the end. Almost too relaxed.

Second class (I have one more and we're done with our socks) she starts right on time, and goes through "homework" the last 1/2 hr. of the class. I like that. I know what's expected and there's still time to ask questions if needed.

While the second teacher is more "scheduled" she also gives time for questions, but only at the very end. (regarding pattern, etc.)

Both teachers are available after the pattern explaining for help. Like that.

Both teachers were obviously very experienced and stuff like dropped stitches, twisted stitches, off with counts didn't phase them a bit. They helped fix (or fixed them) and reassured the student.

Lots of compliments help too.

(even when you know there's mistakes in the work!)

Have fun!

I'll be checking back to see what you make!