The school year is coming to a close. Seniors have one more week. Graduation will be the following Friday. In the meantime, the seniors' last week is also the week we are doing End of Course (EOC) testing (those state tests that determine whether we're leaving children behind). This coming week will be a bit of a mess. All of the testing is going to be done in my room and the adjoining math classroom; the rooms are separated by a heavy curtain that will be pushed open. The kids are allowed at least 2 class periods to take each test, so during testing, not only will I be booted out of my room every day (except the 2 days of math tests), but everyone who is not testing is going to remain in their 2nd hour class for 2 hours, then in their 5th hour class for 2 hours, so we don't have people moving around and disturbing those who are testing. I can keep my 5th hour busy for 2 hours every day; there are only 5 students, and 4 of them are seniors. They are in the highest-level math course we offer, and have some extensive reviewing to do before they take their final exam on Thursday. But 2nd hour is a whole different story. They are not in an EOC tested course, or we could use the extra time for review. I teach another section of the same course, and I will not see those students at all next week, as they are in my 6th hour class. So 2nd hour has 10 hours of class while 6th hour has none. I'll have to figure out some way to keep them busy and learning, even though we will probably have to meet in the library or computer lab. Oh, computer lab, you say -- there must be math things they can do on the computer. Probably so -- I'll just have to figure out what, since we haven't been using the computers much.
My daughter will be graduating from college this coming Friday, then there's a wedding for one of her friends on Saturday. These events are approximately 150 miles apart. Son graduates from high school the following Friday. Then we have one more week of school. Please do not begin to think that I will be lying by the pool (if I had one) for 3 months until school starts again. There is so much to do over the summer for school -- it contributes to that snowball feeling.
Actual knitting content:
Who has time to knit? Really, days go by and I don't touch the knitting. But I have been trying to get in a little "sanity break" with some knitting the past few days. I received my Loopy Ewe May sock club shipment yesterday, and wound the yarn immediately. I cast on for the scarf project this morning. Well, I wasn't going to, since I have so many works-in-progress, but when I checked my needles, I did have the recommended size available, so it must have been meant to happen, right? I am making the scarf rather than the socks because I saw so many pretty lace scarves/shawls at the Loopy Ewe's Spring Fling 2 weekends ago. My roommate (hi, Mel!) had a whole wardrobe of them with her. So I decided I need to make some.
Spring Fling was wonderful, of course. Sheri is a master event planner. A whole weekend of knitting, Starbucks coffee, knitting classes, a trip to shop at The Loopy Ewe, meeting like-minded people from all over the US and several foreign countries (at least those who got out before flights were grounded by volcanic ash). I forgot my camera, though, so no pics. There are several with me in them on the Spring Fling Flickr group, and one on Sheri's blog. (Scroll down to the 5th picture. That's me in the foreground, exhausted from yarn shopping!) The class I took was taught by Jared Flood (brooklyntweed). It was a seamless sweater class. He's a very good teacher. I enjoyed the class, and will be trying some of his suggestions as I work on the sweaters that I currently have on the needles, as well as future projects.
One of those on-the-needles sweaters is the youth-sized sweater for Afghans for Afghans. Unfortunately, I am not going to meet the new deadline. But I have finished the body, worked in the round to the armholes. I have a partial sleeve, too, as I decided to work on that a few days ago. Hmm - I haven't incorporated Jared's short-row shaping into the sweater body. I wonder if it would be fewer short-rows for a smaller sweater. I'll have to look at the sweater directions I'm following (Jacqueline Fee's Sweater Workshop, basic sweater) and see how she does the shoulder & back-neck shaping, and maybe try the short-rows instead.
I finished the Tweed Baby Blanket at the Spring Fling. I haven't run in the ends or blocked it yet, though.
It is a beautiful sunny day here in Southeast Missouri. About 65 degrees F for a high temp today. The past few days have been around 80 degrees. I hope your weather is good, too, and if not, that you can curl up with your knitting & enjoy a quiet day at home.
Our first iris appeared last weekend; lots more have bloomed in the past week.
Talking about weather reminded me about Prom last Saturday. The weather went bad, and just to ensure this would be a Prom nobody would forget, we had to evacuate to the storm shelter sometime before 10 p.m., as the tornado siren was blaring. Too bad there's no sound system in there -- we could have plugged in someone's ipod and continued dancing. I think the dj packed up and left at that point, so prom was over an hour early. They were anticipating another round of bad weather later, but it passed by on either side of us. This is my son and his date. The prom theme was "A Night Under the Stars". The junior class and their sponsors did a wonderful job transforming the (unairconditioned) gym for the event. Just realized he's standing in the stream.
1 comment:
it's good to hear from you. Whenever you can;-P
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