Tricotomania and more

Today we went to the school to speak to the kid’s teacher and hand in a letter withdrawing her from school to be taught at home. Her teacher is very supportive, recognizing the fact that school really wasn’t challenging her. I’m not sure she understands exactly what home-schooling might be but she is not putting any roadblocks in our way. I think having sent in the work we did on that one day off helped her see what kinds of things might be involved.

In fact, the teacher has been kind enough to say that she will invite the kid in sometimes when they have special events or go skating. This is nice, particularly since the biggest drawback is about the relationships she has with the kids in her class.

We’ve brought home a bunch of stuff from school including any workbooks we are entitled to keep. I have yet to go through them but they will probably be useful (to see what she has already done, if nothing else). And I got some advice about which french grammar they have already covered.

knitting news

I also took the bull by the horns and just cast on with that orange and brown handspun. I am now almost finished a kid sized hat which I started from the crown (CO 6, join; knit one round; knit in front and back of every stitch; k 2 rnds; k1, *M1, k2*, k1; K 2 rnds; k1, *M1, K3,*k1; K 2 rnds; continue until 12 stitches between each increase then do the increases every other round until big enough then just knit every round). It is kind of pointy on top. If you didn’t want pointy then do the increases every 2nd round all the way down (I think). I have taken it off the needles twice (putting it on a long bit of yarn) and tried it on the kid’s head for fit and whatnot.

I started with the navajo plied yarn so the colours are strong and it is clearly stripey. There is some variation in the thickness even between the first and second little skein. When I ran out, I switched to a thicker skein of two ply and changed from 3.75mm needles to 3.5mm needles. It is working out fine though that section has more muted colours. I’m liking it and so is she.

This is good for me because I find it hard to start without a plan and a clear idea of who might wear it. Starting at the crown is good, like starting socks from the toe. You can adjust for the amount of yarn and whatnot. Also, since I didn’t swatch, I have a smaller bit to rip out if I’d chosen the wrong needle size.

Despite the fact that this will clash horribly with her coat, I may well make some thrummed mittens out of some of the rest to go with it. She clearly likes it. I saved some of the roving for this purpose. And I’m not sure what else I’d do with this stuff. A learning experience (in spinning technique, spontaneous knitting, and thrummed mittens) seems like a good use of this lovely stuff.

I was inspired by Mar’s post yesterday. That photograph of her bag of fluff from Tintagel Farm reminded me of my own (different colour — Caribbean — photo in the Gallery) and how calming it is to spin. So got the spindle out and spun up a bunch yesterday evening. It was relaxing. I need to do more.

And then I sat and stared at all the little skeins of that orange and brown stuff trying to work out what to do with it. I bought the roving at Rhinebeck thinking the colours would be good for my partner. But all the experiments while spinning mean that there are several groups of skeins that go together and thus not enough to make anything grown-up sized (and that grown-up has an unusually large head to boot).

I happen to have a skein of brown alpaca in the stash that would work well with this stuff so I’m starting to think along those lines. For example, using the Navajo plied stuff to make a hat, starting at the crown and doing the edge in brown alpaca when I run out.

It also looks like one tiny skein is much finer than the others. I’m thinking I could get some sock yarn in a co-ordinating colour and put some stripes in. I don’t know that hand-spun BFL is really ideal for contrast heels and toes though that was the first thing that popped into my mind.

A couple of things Norma has said, both in the comments and in private e-mails, have made me think more about my approach to curriculum planning.

First, some background: I am a sociologist and worked as an academic for 8 years (not including part-time and sessional teaching). For 7 of those, I worked in a ‘red-brick’ university in England (this means not Oxford or Cambridge but an old, well-respected place). I’m a good teacher, though the students who weren’t interested in doing much work often transferred out of my classes. One of the best compliments I ever had from a student was from one who said that she knew my 3rd year class would be hard work (becaue she had taken a 2nd year class with me) but that she also knew she would learn a lot.

But I am also basically lazy. I had colleagues who stayed up until the wee hours of the morning reading stuff they weren’t familiar with and writing lectures. Unfortunately, for all that work and suffering, they were often frustrated that their students didn’t understand. The students were frustrated, too. I did teach things I didn’t know a lot about but I am too lazy to stay up reading stuff until 3 a.m. Laziness motivated a different approach. In England there is a system of external examiners, a senior academic in the field who moderates the assessment to ensure that it meets national standards (peer review for teaching). Our external examiner often commented on how much my students seemed to have learned in that course I didn’t know a lot about. I had worked out how to get them to learn things I didn’t know.

Now I should be clear about this. This was a sociological theory course. I know the broad themes in sociological theory and a bit about what many theories are about, again broadly. But I am not interested in theory for the sake of theory and so haven’t read all of these folks in detail. And I wasn’t about to start in order to teach an undergraduate course. I started my curriculum planning by determining what the objectives were — what do students at this level need to know. Then I found a good textbook. The next bit is the tricky part — I came up with activities that got the students to read beyond the textbook for at least a few of the authors. And I set essay and exam questions that challenged them to think critically about the theories they had read. I spoke to the librarians who were more than happy to help students make use of things like the special collections. I read the textbook. And I learned a lot from their essays and class presentations.

How does this experience translate into homeschooling? Well, my approach is basically the same. I work out the broad learning objectives and try to find resources that will enable my daughter to reach those objectives. In addition to things like ‘know how to do multiplication’, I also want to help her become a confident independent learner. Another objective is to help her become more self-aware — What kinds of structures work for me? How long can I concentrate on something like that? What helps improve my concentration?

Often a good book is a great starting place. That library find of the series on Québec history (which includes the book on la nouvelle france) provided just such a starting place. It was at her level. And it had a lot of interesting questions, illustrations, maps, etc. She was already interested in the topic because of a museum visit in September and reading about Acadia. I then looked at the museum website because I knew they had a Canada Hall that covers all of Canadian history including this period and found that other resource (tip for those who don’t speak French, that link will have a button on the top somewhere to change the language to English; all official Canadian websites are bilingual).

And then yesterday, I browsed through the Canadian geography section of the children’s part of the library and found a couple of books to extend that element of the learning. One was a little book that lays out 5 themes in Geography in a pretty clear way. The other is a history of maps for children. We will then return to the books about Nouvelle France and use our Historical Atlas of Canada to talk about what Cartier and Champlain were doing. The little book of themes will also help us plan other things we could look at. I already have some ideas — waterways and transportation, and resource based economies seem like obvious topics.

I’ve been reading some homeschooling blogs and finding ideas there, too. You may have noticed a new list of blogs and a new set of links. I update these all the time. As some of you will remember, I started my own blog when I went on holiday partly as a way to have access to my “favourites” while away from home. So this is where I keep what I find.

I have been calling what we are doing ‘project based learning’. This makes sense to my daughter who seems to understand what a ‘project’ is. But when searching on-line, I keep coming across the term ‘unit-study’. I think this is the same thing. Correct me if I’m wrong.

All this is to say that while it might look as if I’m working really hard at this, it doesn’t feel that way. Mostly I am thinking about this and talking about this. I actually like thinking and discussing so it is kind of fun. I’m glad all of you are prepared to listen to my thoughts and interject some of your own from time to time.

And this way of working can also lead to some fun thinking. Cate and I were talking about dyeing yesterday and how that could be the basis of all sorts of learning. I had already come up with chemistry but she came up with anthropology, history, art, and all sorts of other things. And then I started to think about natural dyes and that led to plant studies, ecology, etc. And the great thing about a thing like that is that I would learn a lot, too. Just like I did when teaching sociology.

Sorry to the knitters but I’m trying to work some stuff out and writing about it helps. And some of you give me very good feedback and support for which I thank you.

I’m only a few days into this thing and we are still working out a lot of things. I initially overestimated the amount of input the kid would want into deciding what to do. Too much talking, apparently. So the last couple of days she has said that I can just make a schedule for the next day. We’ve talked a little about what might be on it but not much. At various points this week she has been writing a list of what she wants to learn. I showed her Doc’s list which has some interesting things but she didn’t do more than skim it. I have to remember that she is only 8.

We started with a schedule that looks a bit like a school timetable or my diary. We had discovered on that fateful day off last week that 30 minutes seemed like a good time period for lots of things so it was in 30 minute slots. But things kept taking longer or she lost interest or stuff got moved around. She seems to like having a schedule but isn’t so worried about the detail of what gets done when. So today I tried this (BEWARE, it’s a PDF). I used those square bullet points in Word and increased the font size so she can use them as tick boxes. I’m hoping she’ll like it.

For those who do look, don’t panic about the fact that it is all grammar and math tomorrow. The beginning of the week was almost all History (en français). And we’ve been talking about ‘project based learning’ focusing on L’histoire de la Nouvelle France. We have some great books from the public library. And I’ve found this on the website of the Museum of Civilization. J. put me on to this trick — look under ‘educators’ or ‘teachers’ on the museum website. She figured there might be worksheets or something to help focus a visit but this is even better. And the advantage of living in the National Capital Region is that there are lots of museums so we will go over there too.

I’ve been trying to think of geography things to go with this. So far, I’m thinking some map study of both historical and contemporary maps of the region, some study of rivers as transportation routes and types of boats used (including canoes), and maybe something on natural resources and trade. There seems to be a bibliography on the Fur Trade in that period on the museum website.

The other thing we have learned is that the kid needs to do some exercise before she sits down to work. Hard to sit still and concentrate otherwise. Today we went for a walk in the neighbourhood. Nothing much; just over half a mile (we have a pedometer). Tomorrow we are going swimming. There is a family swim at 9:15.

I’m also trying to keep physical activity and physical education in my mind. I know I need to do something systematic here and at some point I will sit down and work out some learning objectives. We (both) need to do regular exercise. But the kid also needs to learn about different reasons to do exercise (cardiovascular fitness, muscle strenght, flexibility …) and also develop skills that will serve her well throughout her life. We went swimming on Tuesday in the 2 p.m. session. She seems keen to incorporate swimming twice a week into the schedule and she will also continue to take lessons once a week. I will need to learn more about appropriate strength and flexibility exercises and work out a way to incorporate them into our routine (maybe in the morning). All help gratefully received.

On the kid’s list of things to learn is sewing. She got me to start teaching her when we were making her Halloween costume (Florence Nightingale; it requires an apron which is all straight lines). Specifically she wants to learn to make a skirt, pants, and a shirt, in that order because she, quite rightly, thinks that is the order of increasing difficulty. We started on the skirt today. I even had fabric and a suitable pattern in the stash (my fabric stash for this sort of thing is not huge).

Actually, I didn’t start out thinking we would use a pattern. We talked about what kind of skirt — plain with an elastic waistband. We measured her hips after a discussion of what might be the most useful measurement. Then I talked a bit about ease. We measured two skirts in a similar style (one knit, one denim), calculated the ease and talked a bit about why the knit skirt maybe didn’t need as much. Then we found the pattern and worked out which size to make based on her measurements. The fabric has quite a big print, so we also discussed how to position the pattern and how to make the front and the back positioned the same. She paid attention to all of this though she let me do all the pinning and cutting and marking. I don’t think there is time tomorrow to work on this but I think we’ll come back to it soon. And it is summer fabric so the skirt can’t be worn until May anyway.

I think that is enough. As always I welcome comments, ideas, whatever. Sorry about the lack of knitting. As you can see, I’ve been otherwise occupied. Once I get the new time management thing worked out, I’m sure knitting will happen again.

Okay, I know that I’ve kind of been distracted by this homeschooling decision but anyone with school aged kids should check this out. (It isn’t a PDF, Norma, not that you have little kids.).

It generates math worksheets for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. So if your kid is having trouble with some of that, you can print a worksheet to do some practice. You get to define how big the numbers are and how many problems on the page. So you could focus on a specific piece of the multiplication tables, for example. And print a different one every day. Nifty. You could also do it to create harder problems if you have a kid like mine who is proceeding faster than the rest of the class and wants to do something more challenging for homework.

Knitting

On the knitting front, not much has been happening. I made a pair of mittens with Rowan Big Wool the other day. Very fast. I used 7.5 mm dpns and a pattern for toddler’s mittens that was written for worsted weight. They are a bit big but need to be slightly felted for windproofing anyway. I’ll do that soon. I might even write out what I did since the toddler pattern only got me started, really.

I have also finished the film in the disposable camera. Must take it to be developed and then there will be a bit of a photo fest. (Yes, Cassie, I have taken the photo you requested.) In addition to knitting there will be sheep (of unknown breed). I don’t think there is photographic evidence of sheep-being-terrorized-by-small-cat.

My time management (such as it is) is being thrown into chaos by having a small child around all day who I am allegedly educating. Also I actually have some work on and then someone else phoned to offer me work (on the day my VISA bill came in, how did he know that?). I saw him yesterday and that is a promising avenue but I must get back to him. Like Norma, it never rains but it pours. Fibre is what is suffering from neglect.

Perhaps my Canadian friends could explain why they are planning to watch the election coverage tonight. All of them live in dread that the Conservatives will win. Much of the speculation in the press (and it is just that — speculation) suggests that they might. Almost all of them are left wing enough that even if the Conservatives don’t win, they won’t be trully happy. The Liberals are only the lesser of two evils.

I, personally, haven’t done any campaigning for any of the parties and I’m not sure that I know anyone else who has (though I might know a couple of people who volunteered a bit for the NDP). None of us is really directly involved in the election. I have been in the past when I was in the Green Party of England and Wales. And in those circumstances, I have even gone to the count to scrutinize.

But watching something that is boring at the best of times and guaranteed to depress you, such that you stock up on alcohol before the event not for the lubrication of good times but for the ‘numbing effect’. WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?

Good mental health relies on making decisions not to do things you know are bad for you. Not sure what I’m doing this evening but you can bet it will not involve the election coverage.

Thanks for all the support and advice. I must say that it is a bit depressing to see how common this experience of school is. Having made decisions about my own life that involved not doing boring unchallenging things just to pick up a paycheque, I feel that it isn’t consistent to teach my child that one has to learn to cope with this sort of thing.

I also added up all the hours involved in being in school, getting to and from school, and doing homework. It’s a BIG chunk of the kid’s day. She is one of those people who needs a lot of sleep. So there just isn’t a lot of time left to do all the really interesting, challenging and worthwhile things she’d like to do. Particularly when you also want some free play time with your pals that lasts longer than your average school recess. Oh and the time leftover is disproportionately in periods where she is more likely to be tired and thus capable of less concentration, quicker to get frustrated, etc.

So I thought about some of the possibilities: moving some of the lessons (drama, swimming, violin) to weekdays during the day; having lots of time to add other things (like piano which she has been teaching herself); time to do projects properly (reading, writing, visiting museums, etc) in either a concentrated or a long drawn out way; time to knit (which she does well) and sew (which she wanted me to teach her when we made Halloween costumes) during the day; time to go on long cycle rides (when the weather is right) or go skating or skiing or whatever; and so on.

I worry about how she and I will relate when we spend more time together. Despite her completely independent (and unexpected) resolution to argue with mommy less this year, I worry about the potential for mother-daughter shit. And I worry about my ability to run my business.

On the similarity to being a SAHM, I realized that I had great day-care. She was happy and stimulated and getting things from the day care that she never would have got at home with me. And the one time that she wasn’t happy, I talked to the day care worker and they gave her more stimulating things to do and it was fine again. The school, on the other hand, is not really responding appropriately. I’ve talked to them and they do the minimum possible. M-H’s comment on the last post about how teacher’s dealt with her (then) 6 year old son is a pretty accurate description.

And my gut says that she deserves better and that it isn’t fair to leave her in this while I figure out what the long term solution is.

So. I’ve decided that whatever I do now is probably going to be better and if it doesn’t work out, we will learn something. I thought maybe a 1 week trial to see what it might be like (recognizing that that won’t be very representative but it is something) with a view to homeschooling for the rest of this academic year. 6 months plus the summer. And we can research other options while we are at it.

We talked this evening. The kid really liked the idea. She is a little worried about losing touch with a couple of friends that don’t live near us and go away a lot on weekends. And she is a little scared. I don’t blame her.

We are going to make a plan. A schedule for the mornings. Have a 1 week trial. Part of that will be thinking through how we will organize things, reading more about it, making more connections, generally getting used to the idea. I suspect we’ll go ahead for the rest of this academic year. I also suspect you will hear lots more about how we are getting on.

There have been times in the kid’s life that I have thought it might be easier to have a not so bright but compliant child. I suspect it wouldn’t be. I love who she is. But sometimes it gets trying having a bright kid with a serious independence streak.

Right now the problem is school. The other day she asked if she could stay home and do more difficult work. I told her to make a plan and I’d think about it. She made a detailed timetable. We discussed it. She revised the timetable. I let her stay home. She did most of what was on her plan (though it had been a bit ambitious). We wrote down the actual timetable to help learn what was realistic. She was kind of tired and fed up by 2 p.m. but had done a lot. Then we went to the video store with the intention of renting Shark Tale. But we saw that they had Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill and she was so excited we got that instead. For those who don’t know it is a documentary. She loved it. Maybe you are starting to see the problem.

I hoped that the effect might last for a week or so. I was wrong. We had an argument about homework tonight — “I’m not doing that. It is too easy.” We had a discussion about how her day was. What did she do? What did she do when she finished and the others were still working on things? She burst into tears twice. One problem is that her friends are all training for the demonstration team for Jump Rope for Heart and she has decided not to do that (because there are some moves she can’t do) so she had no-one to play with during the morning recess. But that looms over everything because playing with her friends is about the only good thing about going to school.

She gets the bus. She’s the first one on and the last one off which adds a good 90 minutes to her day. That is a lot of day to be doing things of little value and living for a couple of breaks where you can play with your friends.

We have talked to the teacher. Everyone recognizes that the work is not at all challenging for my kid. We have permission to do different homework. But no one at school is really putting any effort into helping her do challenging things. And there is a lot of ‘discipline’ in the Foucauldian sense. Pointless rules and routines. Even I am not good at these.

Currently she is in French Immersion. Her French is way better than all the other kids. We have been advised to consider switching her to a school in the francophone board. She hadn’t liked this idea when we first considered it a year ago, not wanting to leave her new friends, but now she is so unhappy at school she is excited (as long as it isn’t in the middle of the year). I have yet to investigate, make an appointment with the principal, etc. but am already worrying that her hopes of real challenge will not be met. Sure, the French will be at a better level. But the rest of it might be very similar.

So here I am, a woman who never wanted to be a stay at home mom; who put the kid in day-care for 2 afternoons a week even before she went back to work; and who is trying to run a business that she loves from home. And I am seriously considering home schooling my kid. I have no idea how we would do this. My partner thinks we would kill each other by the end of the first week. I am inclined to agree.

But my kid was crying because school is so boring and pointless and takes up so much of the day. And she gets harder and harder to get out of bed on weekdays even though she is frequently up and reading or watching TV before 6:30 on weekends and holidays. And I don’t want my bright, independent kid to be depressed at age 8.

Any and all ideas welcome.

edited to add this link to resources for homeschoolers in Ottawa and this about homeschooling gifted kids (though I’m not that interested in spending money on getting her tested for ‘giftedness’). I also found a copy of the school board policy and all I have to do is write a letter saying I am withdrawing her to receive education at home. I read the 2 articles on the ’start’ page of that first link and am feeling much more confident that this might be possible. The bit about doing it even temporarily makes me think maybe I can try it out, at least.

and edited again to add a direct link to this which makes a lot of sense.

As you know I took socks on holiday to knit and I had had a bit of a spree buying myself nice sock yarn before I went.

The Conwy socks in Lorna’s Laces are finished. I think I already told you that (or explained about them when they were close). I’ll get a photo. Honest. They confirmed one of my views about variegated yarn — texture often makes the pooling and whatnot much less noticeable (or at least less offensive). The colours in this were of similar value (it is the same colourway that Nancy Bush uses in the book) so the colour changes don’t obscure the cabled pattern, either.

But I think my new favourite way to deal with variegated yarns, especially those which are bright colours, is to mix them with a coordinating solid. I did this for a pair of Koigu socks for myself and I’m now doing it with a pair of Koigu socks for the kid.

Basically, I do the stashbuster spiral socks from over at hipknitism (don’t be put off by the site name, this is a really good site for detailed sock instructions). Only with new yarn. And I make the heel, toe and cuff all look the same.

So for the kid’s sock I’m working in thirds like the pattern. On 48 stitches because she’s only 8 (and that seems to fit). I’ve got two balls of a dark denim blue solid and then a really bright multicoloured one that she picked out this summer. Almost rainbow colours. So the toe, heel and cuff will be plain but in the main part of the sock there is one round of bright for 2 rounds of blue.

For myself, I divided the sock in 4 and arranged my solid (S) and variegated (V) as SSVV so that I get 2 round deep stripes of each. I did variegated toes and solid heels and cuffs on those with 2 rounds of variegated at the top of the cuff.

The principle behind the stripe pattern is just to take advantage of the fact that knitting in the round is really knitting in spirals. So you don’t twist the two strands when you change just dropping and picking up the next one because you always come at the point from the same direction so there won’t be a hole. And the ’stripes’ are continuous so only 2 ends per colour to weave in.

I strongly encourage anyone who likes a bit of colour in their life but has not been enthusiastic about how those handpainted sock yarns turn out, to try combining them with a solid in this way. Much more subtle, particularly if the solid colour is also in the variegated. This means that the edges of the stripes can fade into the background from time to time.

I will warn you that when knitting these I get a ridge at the point where the strands change. I am careful not to pull the stitch too tight nor leave it too loose but a little ridge develops anyway. DO NOT PANIC. As long as you have been reasonably careful, this is one of those things that really does come out in the wash. Remember that sock gets stretched over the foot.

I’m liking the blue and rainbow so much that I’m hoping there is enough left over to do a baby hat for a baby expected any day now. The spiral thing will work on anything knit in the round. And I bet Koigu makes for a nice hat.

Norma has been talking about charity knitting and wondering about the deafening silence that seems to occur when she does so. I see her point. Talking about nits makes people’s heads itchy and they don’t comment (especially if they don’t have little kids). But talking about charity knitting? WTF.

I don’t do much charity knitting. Mainly because of my refusal to knit to deadlines and the “producer led commodity chain” that is my knitting. I knit stuff I want to knit with yarn I want to knit with and if I then think that would be nice for someone, I give it away. I also am somewhat persuaded by the argument that many folks need non-knitted stuff more than knitted stuff and that for some folks hand-knit (even nice hand-knits) is less desirable than the stuff all the other kids have.

This does not mean that I think Norma’s scarf from Dave’s pattern is going to be a nasty something the recipient will stuff in a drawer because I don’t think that at all. I’m just enumerating some of the reasons I haven’t prioritized charity knitting.

Last year, I did organize some folks at work to do some knitting for the local Snowsuit Fund. Not much was done though much yarn was also donated. I still have all the yarn and the knitted items in a box in my office at home. I MUST take it over to them while it is still the beginning of winter (though see yesterday’s post). And I’m not sure what to do with the yarn. I may give it to a similar good cause.

Which brings me to this. My pal Ray and the folks in his Knitting Meet-Up are organizing the knitting of hats and scarfs and stuff for folks who are returning to New Orleans and trying to get their lives back together. Many of these folks have nothing. Including no heat. Now I know New Orleans isn’t that cold by Canadian standards but without heat even 10C is cold. And you all know what a difference a hat and scarf make. And these folks are not interested in high fashion here. They are cleaning shit off walls, quite literally. So if you have the inclination or have money or suitable yarn to donate, go check out his site and send stuff. No, there isn’t a tax deduction. They haven’t spent a lot of time doing paperwork to get charitable status. They are just knitting stuff and distributing it to those who need it.

And whether you knit for charity or not, you should also look at what you earn and how you live compared to others and get your finances in order. How much do you give to charity? (rhetorical question, please don’t tell me) And how much could you give? Not knitting. Money. Preferably in regular monthly donations (easier for you; easier for the charity).

Here’s who I support: Oxfam for overseas development; the Alternatives to Marriage Project because I really want recognition of family diversity (I’m on their board, too); and I’ve just joined the board of (and will make a donation to) the Lambda Foundation which is a nice mix of supporting LGBT issues and supporting academic research.

I know I need to review all this and add some stuff. One friend suggests thinking about supporting one local, one national, and one international cause. You would also think about supporting something for change, something for health, etc. But you should seriously consider sending money to whatever you feel strongly about. The knitting is just a bonus.