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.....