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.