You are currently browsing the monthly archive for January 2011.
A few links work clicking:
Journey North Mystery Class, sounds really intriguing and fun. It’s a mystery! It’s science! It’s helping you track the lengthening days! Thanks to Melissa for her post about it.
YOLO Colorhouse: really inspiring colours to stare at. Clicking them brings up intriguing colour combos. Maybe it’s just me that stares and the walls and wants a change every winter, but I’m betting it’s not.
“Interesting” and “Open Thread” for some really disturbing studies on the state of education. Reassuring, though, if you’re a home-schooler also suffering the mid-winter willies that seem to hit me each year.
New Spice “Study Like a Scholar, Scholar” on YouTube – if you like the Old Spice commercials, you’ll laugh at this.
“Drought” YA book review
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“The things we hate about ourselves aren’t more real than the things we like about ourselves.”
Ellen Goodman
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Have you forgiven yourself for being imperfect? After all, heavenly cherries have pits, and yet it is from those hard kernels that new life springs.
January, where are you rushing to? I am pretty sure I just set monthly goals for myself. You can’t be winding down. I’m good with only one of four targets for the month. Socks. Yes, socks. We have invited our dinner guest but I still need to find time to fit hiking or snowshoeing in somewhere. Calling Gramma will be fairly easy to work in. But, oh, I do not like this feeling of last-minute action.
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Last June I threw a birthday party for myself and had my friends and family dye yarn for me. My friend Wanda dyed this and called it Canola Fields. I tried it with at least 2 different patterns before settling on a simple texture pattern. It’s the Waffle Rib in Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch. I’ve done this pattern more than any other – it’s Rainer’s favourite. Yet I’ve never done it for my own feet. I slightly lengthened the Waffle Rib because I wanted that interesting row to be a little more of a marker of progress. It occurred less often and therefore meant more. Does that make sense? It did to me at the time.
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I grafted the second toe on Friday and then they came with me on my first trip to the skating trails. (It took a long time for them to open this year, with the surprise flooding of the river when it should have been freezing solid. Unlike in Winnipeg, we don’t skate on our river but beside it instead. However, this year ice jams made the water leap the banks and make a real mess of things.)
These socks really do remind me of the canola fields around here, a very High Summer evocation for a skating trip!
Today, as I dashed to the treadmill, I caught sight of my children. And you know, the kids are alright. I was beginning my traditional late-winter spiral into doubt and panic. For a while at least, it’s halted.
Through the doorway to the living room: Tias balancing on the Bosu while knitting, watching Arthur.
Arthur has been on his Netflix playlist as often as we’ll let him lately. It’s perfect timing, as he’s sorting through a number of issues about growing up, his place in the world, morality, and other big questions. Arthur deals with a lot of ideas that are swirling around Tias just now.
In the kitchen: Sandra, baking scones because I’d asked her to.
Helpful, dependable, deep-thinking Sandra. I’d been craving scones for a week, ever since this photo came up in my Flickr friends’ photos. Warm cranberry and orange scones were being baked while I ran; what a delightful thought: keep running and lunch will be warm and golden.
You know, when I look at them as people and not as Grade 6 or Grade 8, they’re wonderful. They’re complicated. They’re growing up.
They’re alright. We’re alright.
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“The sole end of education is simply this: to teach [humans] how to learn for themselves; whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain.”
Dorothy Sayers
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What are you teaching?
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Venus, Mars, Saturn. A unit study underway.
Astronomy Cast makes an excellent companion. The Solar System survey way back in episodes 40 or so (all back episodes are on iTunes) is particularly strong.
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Low-level colds are making us a little dizzy and unfocused.
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We’re cocooned in for deep winter and trying to make space indoors and out.
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Spacey. Yep. That’s a good word for us.
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I love this. I’m living in it.
Yarn: Swish Worsted, Lava Heather
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It’s as perfect a cardi as I can currently imagine: classic yet interesting, warm, drapey, flattering, cozy, stylish. And long. I’ve been, well, longing for long.
The Lava Heather is a most complex and plummy brown. Gorgeous.
The stockinette laid remarkably flat after blocking, and it only needed a light steaming with the iron to keep the sides from being too sharply folded along the seam line.
I only made 2 mods: to shorten the cuff length on the arm (7cm instead of 10cm) and knit them straight rather than belled; and to make the sleeve a little snugger by following the instructions for the XS, ie, only casting on 2 per side instead of 4, and picking up the same # of sts for the body.
I used nearly every yard of yarn, even unraveling my swatches.
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A-line coziness
2 stitch faux seams
pocket meets the side and bottom edging
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Somewhat tragically, it is the best stockinette I have ever knit. Smooth, even stitching such as I used to despair I’d ever produce. And it’s hidden on the inside for the most part.
I know it’s there, though.
Falling for fruits…
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I don’t mention it much, but I work for Weight Watchers a few hours per week. I’ve been leading meetings for 3 years now, but I’ve been with Weight Watchers since 2002 when I (finally) admitted I needed help to lose weight. Every January, the New Year’s crowd floods in and we have a flurry of busyness. This year has been beyond anything I’ve seen. The new program, and the advertising for it, is pulling people in. Big lines stress me out a bit and I’m always caught between wanting to connect with each person to give them whatever tip or motivation they need and wanting to get the line moving.
This is tricky – people need to know I care, that they’re not just a number on a scale, and they need to know that I believe they can change. Change. It’s at the heart of life, but we resist it. It’s what’s scary and yet exciting about new things.
When I came to WW (reluctantly) I hoped I could change; I wasn’t sure. I see that in face after face now that I’m on the other side of the scale.
I have to say, I love the new program. It takes everything I liked about the old program and that made me successful, and makes it even more flexible, more livable. I’m excited to think that it just might be exactly what all these enthusiastic faces in line need in order to change.
Change. Helping people figure out how to unlock that bit of bravery they need is so satisfying. Helping people remake their lives. Helping people gain confidence like a snowball rolling down a hill. I feel lucky every Tuesday. And recently, with the flood of interest, I’ve been feeling even more energy for change. Adventures of a most personal kind unfolding around me.
We’re still working away at the 100 push ups program. Everyone is making really good progress.
Except me. I’m sort of dawdling along it seems. After a rather enjoyable Week 1, I’ve had to repeat Week 2 over and over again as it repeatedly kicked my ass. Oi. I was starting to feel like I was treading water. On Sunday I did another exhaustion test. Before the program, I could do 8 good form push ups. On Sunday, I did 18. That’s more than double!
I’ve decided to move along to Week 3. I’m prepared to repeat it over and over again, too. After all, it’s not about ticking off the weeks, it’s about working on arm strength. I’m pleased with the program. Without it, I never would have thought to do 5 reps, and I never would have the stubbornness to keep at it without the format of the program beckoning me onwards. I’m not going to admit defeat, not going to quit. Sometimes that part of my personality trips me up, but in cases like this – or losing 50 pounds or training for a half-marathon – it really pays off.
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“The cure for boredom is curiosity.
There is no cure for curiosity.”
Ellen Parr
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What questions are you asking?
