Tricotomania and more

Back in July, I posted about the fact that following Tigger’s interests has meant going to church. We have been attending a downtown Anglican church for just over a year now. And Tigger would like to be baptised. So I have promised to knit her a shawl.

Her initial stipulation was that it should be a triangle but we talked about it a bit and she agreed that one like her grandmothers would be nice. I knit my mom the Faroese Flower Shawl by Lucy Neatby a couple of years ago. I think the shaping of Faroese shawls is great and will be particularly suitable for a kid because it stays on the shoulders better.

I have yarn. I bought a skein of laceweight alpaca & shetland from Wild Geese Fibres. It is lovely. And even nicer when the swatch is blocked. (Franklin designed her a great logo, eh?)

I have Stahman’s Shawls and Scarves and have been looking through that but nothing was really clicking with me. And then I realized that both of the faroese shawls I have knit previously (the Neatby one and one designed by Sivia Harding) were designed to emphasise the unique design features of this style of shawl. In particular both do something interesting with the back panel. Stahman is still a useful resource because she has good information about the construction of these shawls (top-down) which will help enormously in the process I am now embarked upon.

My next step was to root around looking for lace patterns. I have a couple of the Walker treasuries out of the library but these have been less helpful than I expected. (A quick glance makes me think they’d be incredibly useful for designing aran sweaters though.) As usual I just leafed through other patterns I had and found a scarf pattern that would work well in the back panel. It also has beads, a bonus if you are 9 (and just a nice touch for a special occasion shawl).

So now I am trying to work out what to put in the rest of the shawl and how to make it work. I was swatching diamond patterns last night. The difficulty was to get one that stacked so that the outside eyelets form a continuous diagonal. The shawl construction is basically two triangles with a panel between them and then another set of increases for the shoulders. But the two sides need to increase along the front edge and the edge of the back panel. I think I have something though I have also discovered that I want to knit this on smaller needles than my 3.5mm Addis. (I like the Addis though, so I might make a trip to the LYS.)

But I’ve also charted out the edge part of the scarf pattern with the idea that I might use it along the front edge and beside the back panel. Like that one row of flowers on the Neatby shawl. Or like this. I like the way that the pattern emphasizes the shaping. I’m going to have to think more about how to incorporate that with another lace pattern.

I’ve also decided to do this as a garter stitch shawl rather than stockingnette. Garter stitch is traditional for faroese shawls (though authenticity is not one of my goals). I’ve been swatching the lace in garter. You don’t get those hard diagonal lines but the diamond shapes still look really nice. With the halo of the yarn, I think it gives a nice soft finish.

I’m really enjoying the process of designing lace. Basically, I draw a lot of circles on graph paper, then fill in the corresponding decreases. I’m working with geometric patterns and I like that. Similar to designing quilts. And I’m taking a similar approach to that I use with quilts. I take a basic building block and try to do something interesting with it.

Here’s an example of a quilt I designed for a friend’s baby several years ago. I started with a basic block sometimes called Milky Way and went from there. I hand quilted it and stitched “Ali’s Galaxy” into the quilting. (excuse the blurriness; I scanned this from the photo album)

I am now way off topic but I’m hoping the quilt gives you a sense of how I play with geometric patterns when designing. If any of you have suggestions for the faroese shawl, shout out. I’ll keep you updated.

I was rooting around on the BBC Radio 4 site and came across this program (originally broadcast in 2002)which is still available to listen to on the site. I note that both historians and theologians contributed so it should be an interesting listen. A bit of history is always a good thing given the current state of the debate.

For a good history of marriage in the US, I strongly recommend Nancy Cott Public Vows. It is particularly interesting in the relationship between particular religious ideas of marriage and the state form of marriage in a country which held the separation of church and state as a central founding principle.

You will notice on the sidebar that one of the organizations I support is the Alternatives to Marriage Project. AtMP supports family diversity and opposes marital status discrimination in policy and law.

We found this book on the shelf at the library the other day. It looks rather interesting though Tigger is not interested in it right now. Since Mother Crone is busy planning a middle-school US history unit, she might want to check it out.

Joyce Hansen & Gary McGowan (2003) Freedom Roads: Searching for the Underground Railroad Chicago: Cricket Books.

While the topic is the underground railroad (and it appears to have lots of good historical information on that), the approach is very focused on how historians know what they know. Each chapter looks at a different type of evidence and assesses its value and how it would be used by historians. I only skimmed the book but it looks like it is well presented with lots of pictures of actual artifacts, record books, etc. It also deals with how historians use a variety of sources to build up a picture of what happened.

The target age range is middle-school.

It took a while to get started but winter is here. People think it’s weird but I actually missed Ottawa winters while I was in England. And I thought last winter was really awful. Too warm. Lots of ice.

My favourite kind of winter day is one with snow on the ground, blue sky, sunshine and about -10C. It has been a bit colder than that recently but absolutely gorgeous. I have a lovely warm red parka, Sorel boots (I read the little thermometer on the tag when I buy and it said -40 on this pair), those lined mittens, wool hats… Wrap up warm and get out and enjoy the weather!

This weekend my partner went skating for the first time since he’s lived here. He’s English. He’d only been skating maybe 10 times in his life and that in rented skates in indoor rinks with poor instruction (from what I can tell). He was refusing to learn but this year decided that it might be a nice way to spend time outdoors in the winter. So we took him around to the rink at our local rec centre. He did really well. He understood the principles from having watched me teach Tigger and a brief explanation. He has good balance. And he was away. He did fall quite spectacularly sometimes but that is partly because he knows how to fall properly (he did play rugby in his youth) and so tried to have some control over what was happening.

Yesterday I noticed that a section of the canal is open so we might have to go down there. It is much nicer to be able to skate for some distance without passing the same place more than twice.

I discovered this on the camera when I downloaded the bread photos. He is sleeping on the finished body and sleeve. I’m about half-way on the 2nd sleeve. The colour (on my monitor anyway) isn’t a bad reproduction. I cropped out most of the mess. That is the end of our kitchen table. Obviously the end we don’t use regularly for eating.

Now with Photos…

Tigger thinks it is just like store-bought. (This is meant as a compliment.) It tastes great. I am inordinately proud of myself.

Despite the warnings that it might be really difficult to make my own starter, I am perservering with this little project. I had bubbly stuff. So I surfed a bit looking for what to do with it and found one site that said I should add some more flour and water when it was bubbly and it should get all bubbly again within about an hour. So I did that. Seemed happy.

Tonight, I decided to try baking something with it. Just to see. I went back to Melissa’s bread blog and checked a couple of her links and found a simple recipe so I’m trying that. I being patient. My house is not 70F so things might take longer to double or whatever. I’m going to see how it works.

I have been very uninterested in reading all kinds of stuff and trying to make the perfect sourdough. Or even to learning a lot of the science behind it. I think I’ve picked up a bit of Tigger’s pioneer inspiration. I’m betting Ma Ingalls didn’t read a bunch of books and check out who had the best starter before she made bread. I’m thinking she just got on with it using what she had to hand. And that she tried different things and worked out what worked better but sometimes just did it a particular way because that was what ingredients she had and how much time she had and how warm her house was…

So I’m just giving it a try and seeing what happens. I don’t need to be the best bread baker ever. I am aiming to make edible bread in a way that fits easily into our lifestyle.

So when I have been surfing around looking for recipes, I’ve tended to avoid those that add a lot of stuff. I have been using a “did Ma Ingalls have this ingredient” kind of test. Not rigourously but roughly. And if this starter doesn’t work, I’ll throw it out and try again. Maybe. It is mostly flour and water. No great loss.

I think it has been bothering me that so many people seem to be scared to try anything for fear that they will do it wrong. That is evident in the knitting community on-line. And what I’ve seen of the bread thing seems to have a bit of it, too. Must research all the ways I could do this, pick the right one, work really hard at making sure I do it exactly right, etc. I am not convinced that either bread or knitting need to be that exact. Lighten up. Try stuff. See what happens. I am.

It is not unusual to see descriptions of various methods of homeschooling oppose two extremes. At one extreme are “school at home” folks who use a structured curriculum, have a classroom at home, and may stand in front of the blackboard teaching their children. At the other is the radical unschooler who basically lets kids lead the whole learning process, is very unstructured, and probably does nothing that resembles school at all. Most of us recognize that both of these extremes are straw homeschoolers meant to illustrate the wide variation and that most of us fit somewhere along this continuum.

I am on the unschooling end of the continuum. Tigger spends a lot of time sewing, knitting, spinnning, reading and generally leading her own learning. Despite some attempts at structure and ensuring that a few topics (like math) get covered in some formal way, we have been pretty inconsistent in these attempts. But twice this week I have been standing in front of a blackboard “teaching” math.

Yep, you read that right. We have a little cabinet above the phone in the kitchen with a blackboard on the front. And I was writing math problems (from a workbook) on it and asking questions and teaching the material. Paradoxically, that is still unschooling.

I think I have mentioned the Doll School before. Tigger is really interested in dolls (baby dolls, no particular brand, many of them either gifts or inexpensive generic ones). She has 7 of them. 5 go to school. Despite her desire to be unschooled the dolls like structure and need structure (as she told her Dad when he asked). So they have desks and sit in rows and have a schedule of subjects that they do over the week. Because of the blackboard, this school has moved into the kitchen. It is often going on behind me as I do my work (and read my blogs) at the computer.

The other day, Tigger was having difficulty with the math. She asked me to help and suggested that she sit with the dolls and I be the teacher at the front (usually her job). So I did. We went through the lesson and she helped the dolls put up their hands and answer questions. She really enjoyed it because she got to do this. And they all got the concept (probability, if you are interested). A couple of days later she asked me to teach math again. So I did. We all had a lot of fun. And the learning was obvious too.

I suspect that some folks would be tempted to overinterpret this development as an indication that she wants more structure and that I should reorient our homeschool. But I don’t think this is the case. I did, with her permission, write out that guide for the history component of the doll school, but no one has done any history the last couple of days. And there doesn’t seem to be any doll school at all today (much spinning and sewing of bonnets is going on).

I think that the doll school enables her to introduce the structure she wants into her learning. It gives her a way to ask me to “teach” her when she thinks she needs it. It gives her a fun way to do math using a workbook that she likes (it isn’t one designed for homeschoolers, but one designed as a supplement for schooled kids). And it is a game. So when she isn’t interested in it anymore, there is no pressure to keep doing it. It is still child led. Crucial for her independent personality, it is under her control. I only get asked to teach. (Though I was also able to convince her that the dolls should be working at her level.)

The irony of standing in front of a blackboard “teaching” math was quite humourous though. Particularly in a week where I was the “unstructured” parent on a library panel about homeschooling. Folks got a good laugh out of that example of how those straw homeschoolers don’t represent anyone’s reality.

I just wrote out a plan for the next bit of history Tigger wants to tackle. Because History is part of her Doll School (yes, they sit at desks and face the blackboard and she teaches them), she plans to do something 3 times a week. This plan is for about 6 weeks of 3 short sessions a week (though there is a Dear Canada book in there that will get read over several weeks).

The lessons are grouped by themes. The first part is the American Revolution from a loyalist perspective (including attacks on what is now Canada). Lessons 8 & 9 cover the historical geography of the migration (they could stand alone as a map study). Lesson 10 onwards is focused on the life of loyalist refugees in what is now Canada with lessons 13-15 focusing on Native (mainly Mohawk) and Black Loyalists.

1. The Loyal Refugees Introduction
2. The Loyal Refugees Chapter 1; make cannon
3. The Loyal Refugees Chapter 2
4. On the computer: Canada: A People’s History “Join or Die” Introduction and The Bowman Family
5. The Loyal Refugees Chapter 3
6. On the computer: Canada: A People’s History “Join or Die” Butler’s Rangers and Joseph Brant Introduction
7. On the computer: Quiz at the War Museum Revolution Rejected
8. The Loyal Refugees Chapter 4
9. Map Book 6 “Exploring Canada’s History” (author: George Quinn, published by Apple Press Publishing, Newmarket ON, phone 905-853-7979), page 23 (make sure you use the information from the chapter in Loyal Refugees, especially on pages 58-59 for Nova Scotia, pages 60-61 for New Brunswick, page 63 for Québec, and pages 68-69 for Ontario)
10. On the computer: Canada: A People’s History “Brave New Worlds” Introduction
11. Map Book 6 “Exploring Canada’s History” pages 24 & 25
12. Dear Canada (not really a one lesson read aloud but fits well here; start earlier and read alongside)
13. On the computer: Canada: A People’s History Joseph Brant Refugees on Their Own Land and Betrayal and Compensation
14. The Loyal Refugees Chapter 5
15. On the Computer: Canada: A People’s History “Freedom and a Farm” Introduction, Boston King, David George, Exodus and Roots

I have planned this based on my usual guidelines:

* It doesn’t have to be the perfect course (good enough will do)
* Less is more
* If it isn’t working we can adjust it as we go
* This is not the only time we will look at this topic

The guide is based around a couple of books that we already have (The Loyal Refugess and the Map Book; we have ordered the Dear Canada book from the library) and some online resources. All of those online links (with the exception of the quiz) are from the notes that go with Episode 5 of Canada: A People’s History. We might also go and find the DVD of that and if you have the series, you could substitute watching parts of it for reading the bits on-line (information about which episodes are on what DVD can be found here) . Tigger is a reader so reading the summaries works well for her.

I have posted my plans in case anyone else finds it useful. Teacher resources for Canada: A People’s History are also available. I had not looked at them when I wrote this post. My view of the grade levels, by the way, is that it is dictated by where the topics come up in the various provincial curricula. History (and social studies more generally) is one of those areas where specific topics to be studied are somewhat arbitrary. I find skimming teacher resources for all grades can sometimes give me good ideas.

We’ve been baking bread regularly around here. Mostly me but sometimes Tigger and sometimes one starts and another finishes. My partner has even done it a couple of times (when we need bread and no one else was stepping up).

Aside: There is one odd thing we’ve discovered. My partner can’t eat bread. He loves bread but it gives him a really bad belly ache. It is not all wheat products, just bread. And he can eat pita and other flatbreads. We’re not sure why this is and if quantity has something to do with it (flatbreads mean less bread per quantity of filling in a sandwich) or the yeast (though beer doesn’t cause a problem). Anyway, he severely limits how much bread he eats and only sometime indulges. But he’s tried the homemade stuff and has had no problems. None. Weird. I’m wondering if there is some preservative in even the bakery bread we buy that causes the problem (though wouldn’t that be in the flatbreads?).

Back to the bread. We started with Wisteria’s recipe and have basically experimented. We have a friend with a baby so we haven’t used honey (babies under a year old can’t have honey, even when cooked) so she can eat the bread (because she’s old enough for real food). Also, Wisteria uses honey because she keeps bees and has tons of it lying around. We’ve been using molasses mostly. I actually really like bread with molasses in it and so does Tigger.

We also don’t measure. We were using yeast in packets and worked out that was 2 tsp, adjusted Wisteria’s recipe accordingly and went from there. So we kind of measure the water (but not the temperature) and we definitely don’t measure the sweet stuff. And then we add flour until it feels right. We’ve only guessed at what that means but usually it works out well.

Flour has also varied depending on what we have and what we want to try. I know that I shouldn’t use all purpose flour so we’ve been buying bread flour but that is about the only limitation. We need to go back out to the mill in Manotick and get some of their flour as it is good, locally ground, and so on.

Anyway, in relation to all the Laura Ingalls Wilder inspired learning going on around here, we picked up a couple of cookbooks at the library the other week. One is about cooking in pioneer days, Skillet Bread, Sourdough, and Vinegar Pie by Loretta Frances Ichord. (The knitters can giggle over that name.) While looking through it for something else, I found a recipe for sourdough starter. It is in a chapter about the California Gold Rush and even explains different ways to make it.

When I mentioned it to Tigger she ran upstairs and got the current LIW book and leafed back a few pages to read the part where it explains how to make sourdough starter. It is in By the Shores of Silver Lake, Chapter 21, Merry Christmas.

“You start it,” said Ma, “by putting some flour and warm water in a jar and letting it stand till it sours.”

“Then when you use it, always leave a little,” said Laura. “And put in the scraps of biscuit dough, like this, and more warm water,” Laura put in the warm water, “and cover it,” she put the clean cloth and the plate on the jar, ” and just set it in a warm place,” she set it in its place on the shelf by the stove. “And it’s always ready to use, whenever you want it.”

(page 196 of the edition we have from the library)

The other recipe also involves buttermilk with an explanation that it would not be used if they didn’t have it. I decided to pick some up today even though the recipe calls for 4 tablespoons and you can only buy it in 1 litre cartons. I have a recipe for buttermilk pancakes I might need to try with the rest.

I went a rooted around to find Melissa’s bread blog for more information and ideas. (I should also look more closely at her bread carnival.)She’s got some great links to other bread blogs, several of which are specifically about sourdough. I had a quick peek at some but I’m not sure I want to do that much reading and be that scientific about it. We seem to be doing well with the “try it and see” approach. I sort of feel like I want to learn more about the process and why different things are done in a particular way, but mostly I’m enjoying the freedom of this more creative approach. I may, of course, end up with the sort of crisis she reported here, but I hope not.

Despite my inclination to just dive in without reading up on it first, there are links to sourdough bread recipes once I’ve got this starter going. And I think I might want to drop by there more often and see what they are up to on the bread front.

I think my biggest problem is going to be finding a consistently warm place for my starter to get started. I have been keeping the house kind of cool and wearing warm clothes, only turning up the thermostat when necessary. In the evening, I often go down to the family room where we have a gas fireplace that warms the room up quickly. The recipe suggests the water heater, but if mine was that poorly insulated, I’d be pretty angry. I suspect I’ll go for the counter next to the stove since that probably warms up more frequently than other places. And I really have no idea how warm it needs to be for the magic to work. I guess I’ll find out. If it doesn’t work, maybe we’ll leave it until spring or summer to try again.