Teaching

Yesterday, my lazy Sunday, I was flipping through channels because I had already watched everything that I found remotely interesting On Demand. I stumbled upon Teach: Tony Danza. I thought, 'This should be interesting." You'd think every reality show anyone could ever imagine had already been done! I thought this was going to be garbage but after watching the first episode and seeing clips of upcoming episodes during the season, it might actually be interesting. I figured it was just some publicity stunt to get him back into the public eye but he seems to really want to succeed at teaching. Administration and the kids aren't cutting him any slack. If anything it's going to be a more difficult ride for Tony Danza as a first year teacher than any other first year teacher. I tried to see if he's still teaching at the school where he did the reality series but I guess not. It was a one year experiment which I find lame. Granted he wasn't fully credentialed but it would be good to see what happened to his students who moved onto 11th grade and it would've been good to see if he improved at all in year 2.
It is a teacher work day. I thought that I would get to begin planning for our Enrichment activities which revolve around the Harvest. Instead I did a bunch of filing and the majority of my time here has been working on things that I need to get laminated later today. Of which I'm still not done. It's a whole lot of coloring for these file folder games I wanted my kids to be able to use.
It's amazing to me that we get an entire day to work in our classroom! I have never worked at a school where that happened! In fact, I asked our Director of Education what exactly were we going to do for our teacher work day and she said it was a day for teachers to work in their classrooms. I'm still in shock. No meetings are scheduled. I have grown accustomed to having a teacher workday and it being devoted solely to professional development with maybe an hour or two spent in the classroom. I packed my laptop, some letters, and of course some knitting (crocagator). It's already about 2:30 and out of the three things I just mentioned, I've only been able to get to the first one. Oh well. One must always be prepared! After laminating, I have my first home visit of the month. I hope it isn't too bad.

why do you blog?

I was thinking about this last night. One of my blogging friends just recently decided to throw in the towel. Her life is now headed a different direction and the thing that made her start blogging in the first place was no longer there. That made me think if that was going to happen to me. Yes, life has become busier and yes, I'm not as obsessed with knitting and yarn as I was when I first began blogging so my readership has waxed and waned as has my blogging in general! That doesn't mean that blogging has lost its importance in my life.
In the beginning, blogging for me was about showing off my knits and my yarn. The person behind those knits and all that yarn rarely showed her face. Now the tables have turned and the knits and the yarn are a bonus to the person that once stood behind them. As time passed and I grew older, my reason for blogging shifted. I didn't just want to share about knitting. I wanted to share a little more of the me besides the knitting. Has it been scary to share more of myself with the world? Sure. Yet there have been many times when I just needed support from friends or I just needed to vent and not have anyone judge me. That's why I blog. I like the friends I've made. Granted many have come and gone but that's life. For me blogging is a way to express myself without any judgment. So what if no one reads it.
Now tell me, why do you blog?

a change of heart

I cast on for green leaves not too long ago and I have to tell you that the cast on alone killed me. The idea of working 270 sts back and forth (in straight garter stitch mind you) was not all that exciting. So there it sat while I worked on my purpley mush and then decided to cast on for that kittyville hat. Purpley mush just needs to have the buttons sewn on

and my kittyville hat just needs some ears.

Then along came the the new knitty. It was love at first sight. I cast on for my crocagator scarf late last night and worked on it a bit after watching this week's episode of Parenthood and then a few episodes of Weeds. Yes, it's got a feather and fan vibe to it which I swore to NEVER subject myself to again but I'm working through it.

I'm still working on finding the best place to take pictures in our North facing apartment but obviously it's been tough. I set aside my crocagator though cos the hubs came home with some mail for me! :) It is Sleight of Hand from Sock Yarnista

And Illusion from Stash Menagerie. 

Both are amazingly soft and beautiful and I already know what I would like to cast on for with the sleight of hand. I'm thinking illusion will become a hat at some point!
Happy early Birthday to the monkey and to Knottykitty! Both will be celebrating their respective birthdays tomorrow. :)

bullying

You know, I thought bullying only existed amongst children. These days I haven't really noticed much of it (amongst my students) but that's because many of my children are shiesty. I literally can't trust anyone in my class. I think they're all lying to me when I ask them if whatever they did was on accident or on purpose.
Being back in my hometown teaching children who are growing up here in the now is a strange thing. These kids are nothing like the ones I had down in SoCal. Some parents are on top of things, they read everything that gets sent home but others don't respond to emails, or even try to make contact with you. How's a child supposed to want to succeed if the parents aren't even making an effort?
Anyway, I digress. The bullying that I have witnessed has actually been amongst the staff. Can you believe it? I'm not going to go into any details but just know that Teacher A was getting into Teacher B's face about something. This something wasn't even important-at least it didn't seem like it was a big deal but I guess that's because we're not Teacher A. I'm not sure if the situation got resolved but I was literally dumbfounded by it. I still can't believe it happened. We're supposed to be this staff that supports one another yet we are not a cohesive group. We are supposed to be role models to children and Teacher A is a bully! I've always wanted to work with a staff where we hung out once in a while outside of work. That sort of happened at my old school but not really. There's always been the desire to do it but no one has made the effort. Every staff I work with wants to hang out more outside of work but we're all too tired from spending entire days with 24+ children and the weekends? Forget about it.
We are only starting October and in the first month and a half, I have witnessed bullying and there are definitely cliques amongst the staff which is sort of new for me because at my old school, people were just partnered off. To me, a clique consists of more than 2 people and there's a definite clique amongst the staff and it's lame. Again, we're supposed to be role models.

trying to take back my life

School had taken over my life until I put my foot down yesterday. I started with decluttering our bedroom and the room I share with the monkey. I've just been piling stuff instead of filing whatever needed filing and not reading whatever should be read. Our bedroom floor is clearer (by the window). My desk is clear and everything is now filed away. I also put my sock blockers up on the wall (finally). I sat and knit last night too. I was supposed to do some of that today but have gotten distracted with listening to songs on the wedding cds my sister made for us which made us think of other songs and it's now 4 o'clock make that 6:30. Talk about dilly dallying! I did get to chat with my sister for a bit though and I caught up on some emails. I need to make time to sit down and read and to sit down and answer some letters as well.
We watched Fantastic Mr. Fox last night and loved it. We loved it SO much we're going to watch it one more time before we return it!  

Since I last posted, there's been baking and new projects. Last Sunday the hubs and I made vegan red velvet cupcakes. My SIL did a red velvet cupcake experiment a few days before we wanted to try a vegan version.

We had to get creative with the frosting. We didn't have regular cream cheese) only strawberry and I wanted the frosting to have a bit of lemon zest. BEST frosting we've had in a while. :) The cupcakes got eaten up (mostly by me) by the middle of the week. We are definitely going to start making more cupcakes from

They're SO good!!
A couple of days ago I decided to cast on for some new projects. I've mostly been working on goldie whenever I get a chance but I needed another distraction. So I stupidly cast on for the cedar leaf shawlette (270 stitches!!!!!!!!!) so now it's been pushed to the side for now.

It's pretty though, right? ;)
So since that idea was a bad one, I cast on for the buttoned lace cowl.

I spent a good portion of yesterday working on it so I'm about double than what I have pictured. I will try to finish it tonight but I think that will be nearly impossible!
Here's goldie so far:

She's gorgeous as ever. I just wish she were a faster knit! It's going to be eons before I get to show her off!
I leave you with this: I love my new school. I love my co-workers. I love everything so much that I've started to feel good about myself and I noticed that I make more of an effort to look nice at this school than I did at my last one. I think because for once, I'm finally happy. :)

school has taken over my life!!

And so has kid germs. I'm still sick..I've been battling laryngitis for the past week. So this weekend is a 'no talking' weekend. I guess I'm going through all of this because I've been away from mass kid germs for a good year so all those antibodies I had in my reserves got used up. Time to build up some more. :) Once I get through this garbage, I should be okay (one can only hope!).

I received my yarn in the mail not too long ago. This is Evangeline from Three Irish Girls. Isn't she gorgeous?? :)

And this is Forest Primeval.

Being back in a setting where kids can do easel painting has revived my love of color mixing. I may not dye yarn or even spin it but I can mix a mean cup of paint. :)

Maybe I was an artist in another life? I don't know how else to explain my love of color (and texture!). I made a few more batches yesterday but didn't have my camera to capture them. That's on my list (not to mention to take a picture of the wires I had the hubs put up for me in the classroom.
There has been a teeny bit of knitting. I worked a little bit on goldie.

My secret project that I had been working on back in May was finally shipped and received. :)

I made a citron for Robyn for her birthday back in June but ran into some yarn shortage problems (which I had anticipated) but the gal who had dyed the yarn assured me that I'd have enough. HA. That wasn't the case so there was a bit of waiting time. But needless to say, she loves it! This was one pattern I was happy to make more than once. :)

Week 2 feels like Week 20

I do apologize for the current lack of knitting content. Blame can be placed on my new job. Being the head of a class room full of 4 and 5 year olds is no easy task. It has been quite challenging to figure out activities that are interesting to both ends of my spectrum. Attention spans are practically next to nothing and the ability to sit and endure on the rug is also quite impossible for most of them. But we are getting through it. Routines are slowing being put in place. Names are starting to be learned.
The monkey started school for the first time ever last week and she loves it to pieces. Though apparently there was one day last week where she didn't want to go to her school. She wanted to go to my school. The girl has only been to my school at least three times! How could she already love it more there than at her own school??
The hubs has been busy attending school as well. We will be attending a free jazz concert on Saturday-his only hw assignment from his Jazz Appreciation class. We will also be attending the Greek Festival! His drafting class is currently kicking his butt though. He'll push through.
Aside from the kids still figuring out how they ought to be at school, things are going all right. It could be worse than what it already is. So thank goodness it isn't.
Most evenings are spent working on stuff for school but I'm hoping come next year, this same time, I can find myself knitting rather than creating games for my kids!
So since a majority of my evenings are spent on school-related things, that leaves very little time for knitting. Today was a minimum day and I thought I'd be able to squeeze in just a teeny bit of knitting but no such luck. Maybe tonight after I get my parent letter complete. :)
My sister is sweating in Chicago. lol. She was sweating in LA. She had her first two classes on Monday and one of them (her night class) is a sleeper. Her second day of classes was going to be today. Oh, it turns out that she will be in Chicago for 4 years unless it takes her 5 to complete her dissertation. I'm sure she's working towards getting it done in 4 so that she will owe less money! She has no couch. Hers wouldn't fit through her door so it is currently in storage.
My car went crazy again. It went back to beeping and lights blinking on the panel. Thank goodness I got paid yesterday! So that has been taken care of but now apparently I need to replace the timing belt and that isn't cheap..it never ends!