What Ignites Me: A Revisitation

As I looked at my last blog post, I thought: it's been THREE months since I've written anything! Have I failed to be ignited? No, of course not. Then I realized that I should really share the poem that inspired the title of my blog. I can't believe I didn't share it right off the bat, in fact. It fits with today's theme because there are three things that ignite me regularly.
1) Working with students and learning from each other.
2) Writing -- reading others' or creating my own.
3) Stitches; yarn; knitting; spinning; crochet; the feel of fiber between my index finger and thumb.

This poem falls under #2.
What I Have Learned So Far

Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
looking into the shining world? Because, properly
attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.
Can one be passionate about the just, the
ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
no labor in its cause? I don't think so.

All summations have a cause, all effect has a
story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.
Thought buds towards radiance. The gospel of
light is the crossroads of---indolence, or action.

Be ignited, or be gone.

--Mary Oliver

She's got it right on so many counts. What matters is not the thoughts we sit and think but the action we take. "All kindness begins with the sown seed."

I have finished the wildly patriotic socks, and passed them on. I saw MA today (the student they were for), and I asked him how his middle school experience was going. He said "It's going really great." Just in those words I could hear the genuine quality of his voice, and that he was trying just a little harder to be more grown up. What's happened since June? The sixth graders of last year have become middle schoolers, and they're doing exactly what we as teachers intended for them to do -- grow more independent and responsible. It's so hard to see it happening in your own children (as my son hits fifth grade I see the process just beginning), but as a teacher, it's quite fun to see it happen in other people's children! You get all the benefit and very little weepiness.

There were two other sixth graders to knit socks for last year. HW was one of them, the last of the boys. A bit smaller than the other two LARGE boys (both taller than me, as if that were saying much), HW made up for it in his classroom presence. He was such a creative kid with exceptional ideas about all kinds of things, from group names to literature to art and beyond. At first I thought I'd be making some sort of crazy patterned socks, but once he saw a classmate's blue ones (see previous post) he asked for one that was "all kinds of red". I obliged, to the best of my ability. These socks were knit out of a yarn called Happy Feet DK that is so incredibly soft it's hard to believe it's wool. Harder to believe it's washable. I love them, and if I could have gotten away with it, I would have kept them for me. (After all, all these sixth years have the same size feet as me, essentially!!) But.....bad karma and all that. They got sent to HW. I hope he likes them.


Onward we go. Today one of my now-fifth graders asked what happened to the things I was knitting for them last year. Ummm.....

A Portrait Poem

Today in Writer's Workshop the students started writing Portrait Poems. They're following a specific format, where you start one line with "I am..." and then go on to "I wonder..." and "I hear...", etc. I decided to write one (in the spirit of solidarity), and this is what I came up with. I promptly labeled it my "non-teacherly version" and flipped the page over to write another. Here's the non-teacherly (and therefore more all-around descriptive) one.

I AM Poem

I am exhausted yet full of grit.
I wonder if I could ever get enough sleep.
I hear the tick-tick-ticking of my life.
I see people stacked in corners, waiting.
I want time to slow down.
I am exhausted yet full of grit.

I pretend to love the body I walk in.
I feel whispery touches of ghosts as they pass.
I touch the walls of every room I enter.
I worry about finding the door out.
I cry when I have nothing left to give.
I am exhausted yet full of grit.

I understand that all people can change.
I say that peace begins anew with every moment.
I dream about the touch of my babies.
I try to keep the peace.
I hope happiness can still find us all.
I am exhausted yet full of grit.

In which I wonder if I can finish

It's May 23rd. I have less than a month of school left. 4 pair of socks to finish for sixth year students. 5 bookmarks for fourth years. 6 scarves for fifth years. I am reminded of cribbage games of old when I'd be ahead by a TON of points and my dad would claim: "I ain't worried." And he wasn't. Did he win? Yeah, usually.

So I ain't worried. Am I? No. Am I? No. Am I? Perhaps.....

Here's the pluses:
1. I found the patriotic socks that went missing for a couple weeks and convinced everyone in my house that I was insane, destined to spend my life wandering around looking wildly in every direction, expecting to see a half-formulated woolen American flag flying in some corner of the house. Correction: my husband found them. (Although he was the one who originally misled me, saying that he'd taken them out of the shorts they were in and put them down in the bedroom. He also claimed to have later seen them hanging out in the trash. Talk about a heart attack. Not only is there about ten hours invested in those socks, there's $14 of wool and $16 of needles.)
2. I am over half done with the patriotic socks (for MA) and the blue socks which I have not yet photographed (for WS).
3. Bookmarks are small.
4. Scarves will be crocheted, which is speedy.

Here's the minuses:
1. I have to find a place to live before July 1, an endeavor which is not always easy.
2. I have a bunch of end-of-year reports due tomorrow that aren't finished.
3. I am tired. As in weary, exhausted, emotionally spent, easily frustrated, and overwhelmed with life. I don't want to do anything anymore.
4. I also need to bust out two pair of socks for the auction project (Parent and Child socks, won by our lovely art teacher).

All this, and something new, something exciting. I'm starting to teach knitting on June 3rd at the YMCA! It's a volunteer position, but it doesn't matter. I am beginning to make plans about how to intrigue them, excite them, and infect them with the love for yarn.....

What I Love

I love things that make sense of the messy world. Straight lines, clean edges, a box tied up tight with string. I love how a perfectly symmetrical sphere rests its cool weight in the warm palm of my hand. I love evenly tesselated pictures, geometric patterns that repeat their perfect predictability off the page and into unknown space. I love long complicated mathematical proofs that fill up pages of grid paper and emerge with an equation of pure simplicity.

I love rows and columns, lined up in order and never exceeding their borders. I love the tiny kernels of golden corn on the cob, arranged in perfection vertically and horizontally, each tiny cube pregnant with flavor. Anything arranged in boxes and borders with reasoning and logic is a relief to me.

That may be why I love knitting. I love the neat, even stitches created by two dull knitting needles as they click against each other in a predictable rhythm. It's expected and yet always a surprise when a new row emerges with color and structure in perfect accordance with what I had in mind. It is motion with purpose, motion that has an effect on the world. And it never needs be repeated -- it's not like doing the dishes, or changing the baby's diaper, or paying a bill, or watching tv, or listening to the radio. What's created has been created, and there is no arguing with reality resting in your hands.

Considering

Lately I've been completely tuned out, turned off. I'm like an electronic device that nobody has bothered to charge for weeks. Or just hasn't bothered actually powering up. The first sign of this was the overall lack of knitting. As is often the case, I was the last to notice. Other people noticed. My students commented first: Johanna, what happened to those socks you were knitting? Johanna, have you finished the xxxx project yet? Johanna, why don't you ever KNIT anymore? My co-teacher noticed. And of course, my faithful blog readers noticed the lack of progress in my knitting goals. Didn't you?...... (cue the crickets)....

There were other signs too, of course. It's not just the knitting. But it's an interesting question to pose to the universe: why is it that we stop doing things we love sometimes? Readers will go for a period of months without reading anything. Writers (and this is true of me in particular as a writer) will go a year without writing much worthwhile, and then suddenly come back to it with a vengeance. And knitting, while it is pure medicine for my soul, has suffered the same odd fate in my life too. Where does our joy in things go when it goes missing?

So last Thursday I decided to take action. I was at Webs and just decided to buy the yarn for a very cool blanket that my friend was knitting. It was almost completely funded by gift certificates from my birthday, so it was guiltfree. It's a neat blanket. You make a striped hexagon out of a few parallelograms, then sew the hexes together for a neat optical illusion effect. It's called the Illusion Cube Blanket. I've linked to the pattern, and will post pictures soon. I have finished 5 hexagons, and it's really fun. I hope it's enough to rekindle some joy in yarn and the work of the hands.

Oh Beautiful

For spacious skies, for amber waves of grain...


Come on. Look at the socks. Look at them. And pretend you don't suddenly feel the need to break out into absurdly patriotic song.

That's right. Give in to it. Just make sure it's not "Oh, Canada." I started these during the Olympics and would like to say that I did not do so with the purpose of making patriotic socks. These are NOT for me. I am not sure I want to advertise my attitude towards my nation right now. I also question many of the attitudes that have surrounded patriotism and love for your country in the last ten years. It's all gotten very wrapped up in politics and anti-terrorism, and American flags popped up and sold like hotcakes after 9/11. Genuine American patriotism? Perhaps. Timed to show that being an American means support of violence towards others as part of the process of revenge? Definitely.

I don't know. No, what I do know is that MA loves red, white, and blue. He'll love these, and that's really all that matters. I've been working on these for quite some time -- look at my last post and you'll see what I've been distracted by. My students made amazing embroidery squares, that I also feel the need to share here.













That was just the beginning. The finished pillows have been auctioned off to families of kids in the class. I cannot believe I let them escape without pictures. They sat in a trash bag for a few days while I struggled with other projects before I could sew up the stuffing hole. I didn't leave myself enough time.


Many an adult said: "Oh, so-and-so may be able to embroider, but that other kid? No way." and "that student just doesn't have the attention span for embroidery." Many adults even said such things about their own kids -- oh, my child? Never in a hundred years. But guess what? Guess what? (I am now shouting triumphantly.) They did it. (Ok, that was a smug yet quiet tone. End of shouting.) And they did it with such pride, and such care, that you would have thought they were a young Japanese girl embroidering her own wedding kimono onto silk or satin. Many times they sat around the low table with their embroidery gossiping just like a group of 19th century Bronte sister heroines. But I learned something. Not only did I learn several stitches to teach them (ah, who cares about all that...it's in books, after all). I learned that my students can be gentle, and patient, and attentive to detail and beauty at every turn. They can also be maniacs and loud and obnoxious and frustrating. Welcome to the 9-12 child, Johanna. Did I mention that I love teaching these kids?

A Long Unawaited Post

Well! Good thing I don't have faithful readers to disappoint or anything. I've not been posting for almost two months, but luckily, the earth hasn't been thrown off of its axis or anything. Keeps things in perspective, I'd say.

What I've been up to:
--teaching 4th, 5th, and 6th graders
--parenting a couple kids
--trying to take care of my household as a single parent

-- and knitting/sewing!

Pictures of what's been accomplished: The socks for SA! When I gave them to her, I gave her specific washing instructions, and according to the grapevine, she's been very concerned about wearing them only at special times. That'll wear off in time, I hope. I personally think that handknit socks should be worn EVERY DAY.

Speaking of which, today both kids had on handknit socks. GF was wearing some new ones that I knit for her just recently, and DL had on some quite old ones that are too small for him. He said, "Look! We both have Mommy made socks on!" I was so happy. Here's the ones that GF was wearing.


I knit them up in just a few days. Pink and light teal blue? Yeah, those colors scream Georgia all the way.








Onward -- I did some cross stitch for a Christmas gift (no picture, as it IS a gift that I haven't given yet). And then....one of my lovely fifth-graders, Victoria, left for Africa. For ten months, no less. Yes, that's right. She's 11 and going to Africa for longer than all of my vacations put together so far in my whole damn life. I'm not entirely jealous. Part of me is quite happy for her. And we will ALL miss her...she's such an important part of the class. As a goodbye gift, we all helped to sew her a little creature, which is half falcon and half flying pig (in my class this is called an Ub). The Ub has a short and complex history. It was created in the fall as a brainchild by one of our highly intelligent sixth years. The Ub is mostly pig but does have the capacity to fly. When our class chose names for the two groups that go to Art at different times, they chose the Unexpected Ubs and the Fierce Falcons. So the sewn creature is half and half. And the eccentricity of the creature, which is probably making you giggle, is exactly what we wanted to come across. Our class is eccentric, and creative, and crazy, and giggly, and interested in the world around us. And I adore them for all of those reasons.
Also.....I've knit some socks for a new baby to enter my life -- my friend's little redheaded wonder. I've only hung out with him twice but can reliably say that he is gorgeous and perfect and well-behaved and a wonderful little addition to this world.


If there were a penny next to these you'd realize how tiny they are. I cast on for them when my friend went into labor -- over 4 weeks early. I was under the impression at that point that I was knitting for a preemie. Little did I know that he was coming out at over seven pounds!! And long, long feet. I have to pull out the toes and redo them. No big deal. I also have some booties in the works that I'm afraid that I'm running out of yarn for. He's so fun to knit for.


Also, I finished the quite large socks for a friend of mine that I work with. They are beautiful. They did not fit my foot when I finished them, which bummed me out, but she IS a size 10, and so I held on to a bit of faith that they might fit. And they did!! She commented on how perfect they were. Can't ask for better than that.


The yarn was very nice....Araucania makes it; it was some sort of sock yarn by them that is not too soft but not scratchy either. On sale at Webs!!

I also finished GF's purple sweater that's been in the works for awhile. How can I say this without crying about it? Not sure...but the truth is, she won't wear it. Lovely little child, that one.














In the past month I have also become MUCH more familiar with the ins and outs of embroidery and sewing machines than ever before. Or, as my mom would probably be quick to point out, I used a sewing machine for the first time. My students all embroidered these beautiful squares with African-inspired geometric patterns and I sewed them together (yes, with some guidance from the quilting store and from my mom) into even more beautiful pillows. Next step: quilting.

Next pair of student socks in the works is for MA, who is a complex character in the class who I have a lot to say about. More on him (and a work-in-progress photo that will make you want to sing the national anthem) next time.

Unexpected Things

Life is a sequence of surprises punctuated by our reactions to them. Here is the recent sequence of unexpected events happening here.

First, I brought in the socks for FJ on Friday. I tied them with some other yarn in our classroom yarn basket and put it into his hanging file folder, where we return graded work to the students. I announced at our morning meeting what my plan was (to knit gifts for each of them) and that the sixth years would be getting socks. Some excitement, some questions. Neither unexpected. Then I explained that I had chosen a sixth year student randomly and had knit the first pair for him -- FJ. More surprise. The unexpected part? There were no hard feelings, jealousy, or difficulties that arose from this. The students were excited and when I explained that I wanted the gifts to go to use as soon as they were completed, they were nodding. I was surprised at their maturity. I thought about my own ten-year old son and whether he would be as mature about it.

New socks for SA have been started and I'm about to hit the heel. I want to finish by Friday or Saturday. SA is a sixth year student who is quiet and seems to be fairly low key, unless you hit upon a topic she loves: namely, rabbits. One day, while the class was walking to a park in town for a field trip, she and I talked at length about our rabbits. She also loves pink. Her moms have brought her up in the way that I secretly wish I'd brought up my own kids -- no sugar, no processed foods. When kids talk about candy or processed/artificial foods, she honestly has no idea what they even are sometimes. I realize that there are minuses to being raised like this, certainly. But when I come home to a boy who refuses to eat homemade pizza but will wolf down the frozen version, I don't much care about the minuses. I bet SA never screamed her way out of her chair and up into her bedroom after dinner because she demanded candy and her mother said no. Not that my lovely daughter has ever done such a thing. So, the unexpected part of SA's socks? I kind of like them. I thought I wouldn't. I, after all, don't love pink. But these are quite nice together, although I'm not sure about the stripes.

Friday's other unexpected event was a little disappointing. FJ and a friend of his from the class got into a fight in our afterschool program. Not a disagreement, but a fistfight-rolling-on-the-ground type of fight. The kind I expected to see pretty regularly in my last teaching job -- in urban Springfield -- but not so much here. Even though I know there are several factors at play -- including some typical adolescent stuff -- it was still unexpected. From the point of view of his teacher, I was disappointed in him since he is supposed to be one of the role models for our class and is certainly a role model for his younger siblings in the school. As someone who had just knit him socks -- which he was WEARING at the time of the fight -- I wanted to take them off, shake them at him, and say: "THESE ARE PEACEFUL SOCKS!! YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO FIGHT PEOPLE IN THESE SOCKS!!" I didn't. But I wanted to.

In Which We Find Success and a Trophy to Boot

Success!! The pair of socks for FJ -- the first of the randomly chosen sixth year students -- is finished. Kids have been asking, and asking, and asking since last Monday (when I started them) who the socks are for. I've made it a secret. Theories abound. FJ thinks they are for him, amusingly enough. Yet if you knew him you'd understand that he'll think the next pair is for him, too....and the pair after that, and the pair after that.... A few students think they are for my co-teacher. Tomorrow I think I'll tell them.

Reasons why these are perfect for FJ:
1. He likes these colors.
2. He ended up being the first one to receive socks, and this is the sort of thing that will please him.
3. They are perfectly symmetrical, since they were knit both simultaneously on the same needle, and therefore are exactly the same. (Although there is a half row's difference between the two right before the gusset, but if you don't tell, I won't.) FJ is very particular about exactitude and perfection. He will enjoy that aspect.
4. They are big! They would fit me. And he is a large sixth year.
5. I see him when I look at them. It's a function of knitting something for someone, regardless of whether you spend a few hours or a year knitting it. I start to see that person when I look at that pattern and those colors.

Look at the color pooling on these socks. The one on the left shows it perfectly -- it has a blotchy, lie-detector-test-showing-you're-lying type feel to it.


Tonight I went to see the Red Sox World Series trophies and to get a voucher to buy two tickets before they go on sale. I'm not sure if I will actually end up buying them or not, because I just don't have the money for it. But at least the option is there now. We got a picture taken of us with the trophies: my son, my daughter, my soon to be be ex-husband -- henceforth to be known as simply Matt, my niece Jocelyn, and me. The picture is very little indication of what had just happened: over an hour of "I'm so BOOORRREED!!!" and "Mommy, I wanna CUDDLE you." and "Will you get off that vibrating chair?" and "Put your boots back on!" and "Sweetie, the Green Monster is not going to hurt you." and "Can I buy two?" and "Should we just leave?". The picture is also no indication of what was to come: Pizzeria Uno, where I paid for a dinner that I could not afford while one child whined because I wouldn't allow him to try anchovies on half of his pizza. I outright overruled that decision -- hell, I have veto power as mom, as someone who has to smell and pay for the anchovies. While he whined about that and tried to pop his blue balloon all twisted up as a dog with floppy ears, my other child kept hitting her college-age cousin with her pink princess-wand balloon. "I was just petting her hair with the balloon!" "I'll never get to try anchovies!" Seriously. I just sat there and coughed. My niece made lots of jokes about swine flu. I coughed more.

Already cast on for the next ones, for SA. She is also a sixth year. This will be a much different pair--for a much different person. I am having fun this year teaching 11 and 12 year olds! You can start to see the people they are becoming and the ways they will touch the world. There will be less pooling in this pair....I'll show you why tomorrow.

In Which I Fall Behind (and Justify it)

Last weekend was slated to be a lovely, relaxing weekend. It wasn't un-relaxing, per se, but my daughter (henceforth GF) got sick with a nasty cough and a fever. She spent Martin Luther King Day telling me that if I didn't do exactly what she wanted then I was not a peacemaker. Behold the power of Montessori. Last week she told her dad that because the football players wouldn't let girls play, they weren't peacemakers. That's my girl.

GF sleeps in my bed regularly, and between that and the sweet cuddles in which she climbs into my arms and sucks her thumb with her mouth open and breathing her hot little germy breath all over my face and hands, well.....I may be a teacher, with a strong immune system, but it's not THAT strong. I am now sick.

Not to mention grumpy. It's funny how problems in your life come out in everything you do -- have you ever heard someone type angrily? Or sadly? I'm listening to it right now. Have you ever seen someone knit while angry, or upset? You can tell the difference when you look at the finished product. It just takes trained eyes. Perhaps knitting is the way to work through those tough emotions and let them come out in a tightened mess of slipped stitches and varying tensions.

Since I was sick, I took today off of work and will spend my evening finishing FJ's socks, which are turning out very nice. I really do love the yarn. My son (henceforth DL) promised to do some yarn balling for me tomorrow night, so I will have him ball the yarn for the next socks, which will belong to SA. I know -- it's Wednesday. I'm supposed to have finished FJ's socks on Sunday, and started the next ones and be finishing their cuff by now. As my dad says in cribbage: "I ain't worried."

I'm signing off my grumpy sick self now. Off to switch yarn colors and knit the black toes to these socks. I do promise a finished picture 0f these socks either tomorrow or Friday. And then I'll be able to blog about the reaction of FJ when he gets them!!

In Which the Plan Evolves, and the First Pair of Socks is Born

I haven't blogged as often as I'd hoped. I am holding out hope for next week being more conducive to blogging, since I won't be as busy with work. Ah, work. Tough week, with progress reports for students going out, an open house to attend and schmooze at, and a musical breakfast event in the class. Martin Luther King Day is a wonderful thing to see approaching.

The plan has evolved. I knew it would. This is good for me! I have always had trouble seeing things evolve and just....accepting the slower pace of that kind of change. I like to see the ending before I start.

My co-teacher suggested to me that I rethink things -- she is a realist, and pointed that if I don't finish, and end up with socks for only some of the kids in the class, then I should probably finish the sixth years' first. For the (currently nonexistent) public reading this who may not know me, my classroom has fourth, fifth, and sixth graders. It's a Montessori upper elementary class. And she has a great point: our classroom has many three year cycles in it, since kids spend three years in the same class. Each of the three years we study a different area of history, a different subject in science, and a different continent every six years. So why not a different knitted item for each year they are in the class?

Sixth graders deserve the socks. It's indicative of....what? Nice warm coziness to protect them from middle school? Not even hand-knitted socks can help people out there. But it seems like a sizable thing to present them with, and it is a great way to choose colors or patterns that fit with the child's personality.

I knew immediately that the fourth year students should receive bookmarks. I realized that when I thought about the nine/ten year olds that I know. Not only the fourth years, but also my own son, who turned ten in October. With the occasional exception, they are voracious readers. They have gotten over the hump of learning to read, past the awkward Junie Jones and Cam Jansen stage, and now are actually able to access so much! Fantasy, science fiction (why are these so popular with these kids?), realistic fiction, nonfiction about anything and everything, etc. It is the age that I discovered Charles Dickens and carried around the Pickwick Papers until it fell apart.

Fifth graders -- the eternal middle children of the classroom. I struggled with that decision. Again, co-teacher to the rescue! I'm standing the classroom one day this week and she walks up to me and says: "Slippers for fifth years!" What? "Slippers! For fifth years!" It took a few rounds of this until she explained it was an idea for the knitting project. Of course! Felted slippers. They can use them in the classroom for their indoor shoes.

I started on Monday. On Tuesday, my socks for FJ looked like this. I was on task. I'd planned Monday through Wednesday as the days to knit the cuff, Thursday for the heel flap and turning the heel, Friday for the gusset, and the weekend for the foot/toe. FJ is such an interesting student in our class. He is a workhorse and so motivated to succeed. He is truly that kid who will just go after what he wants to get it. He even got to the inauguration because he wrote asking for tickets -- and got them! He could convince someone the sky is green and the grass blue if you gave him the chance. These are a couple of his favorite colors. How do I know? During a problem-solving lesson I needed to teach making a pie chart, and I used favorite colors as an example for a topic to gather data on. Man, I'm smooth. Some people would call this sneaky. I'm going with smooth.

Anyhow, now it's Friday. I am supposed to be on...the gusset? And I started off today with no heel flap! For those of you unfamiliar with sock construction, that's not much of a problem. But before a gusset you really need a heel....at least the way I knit my socks.

So now the sock looks like this.

I like the colors. So now heel is done, and I'm on to the gusset. The heel and toe will be done in black.











The yarn I'm using is Fibernatura Yummy -- and while it is quite yummy to work with, check out the pooling/patterning.

I'm not against it, per se, but it's just...interesting. The yarn is pot dyed, so the color changes are a bit more frequent than I'd like, but it's beautiful anyway.





I am a bit concerned about how to FINISH! Our plan was to do a comparison of length of hands to feet as part of our human body science unit but WE DIDN'T GET TO IT YET!! Where do I put the toe? I guess I will just assume his feet are about my size. He's a big sixth grader. How do people do this for feet they've never measured? The burning questions of sock knitters everywhere.....

Being Decisive

My life is a mixture of parenting, teaching, knitting, cooking, performing household duties as a single mom, and occasional bits of relaxation. Put all that stuff in a Kitchen Aid, push the lever up to about 6, and mix till creamy. That's my life. I often look around and think: "Wow. How did I get here?" But I love it. I love every minute of the insanity, to be honest. I thrive off of it.

So....I have made a decision about this blog and its purposes in my life. I am not ready to launch into a blog of the sort where I share bits of my life through my complaints about the world, such as:
Dear guy-who-cut-me-off-on-the-rotary-this-morning,
Blah, blah, blah.

I don't find that valuable.

I'm also not ready to lobby for social change quite yet -- I cannot yet trust myself to think deeply on a regular basis about changes on that level. I do hope to participate in such things, but what I am able to initiate is limited.
Here's what I want to do: write about two passions in my life -- teaching and knitting. (Probably with a bit of my own kids thrown in here and there.) And lately what I've been doing on the teaching front is writing progress reports for the kids in my class. I've been realizing how different this process is from handing out report cards, which I have also done as a teacher. As I write these, I am thinking deeply about who this child is, about how far they've come this year and where they are going now. What can I do to support him or her in that journey? The answers are long and varied.


There is one concrete thing, though, that I've decided to do for the students in my class this year. I've decided to knit them each a pair of socks. By the end of the school year. So there it is -- my decision. And blogging about that process will let me write about teaching and knitting jointly.

17 pairs of socks by mid June. That's a little more than a week per pair of socks, I believe. It means I will have to be focused and fast.

The Beginning

It's the start of a new year, and with it comes my hope to write more about the things I am passionate about. In short, those things are teaching and fiber arts. This blog will be my way to record my thoughts, ideas, and progress on those things. I have lofty aspirations and goals, of course. I always do. But for now, I'm going to allow the blog to evolve somewhat organically.