What I did this past Saturday.

This is a picture of my wedding.

The vows.

No, I'm not happy :-)

We didn't tell the bridesmaids or groomsmen ahead of time about the wedding.  But they got buttons.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Things I am thankful for:

1.  Kevin.  He makes my life better in so many little ways, and I am still burbling with joy to be marrying him.  I love you lots.

2.  The rest of my family, both by blood and by choice.  I could not live without you and your support.  This does not begin to cover the thanks I owe to all of you.

3.  My pets.  Kitties to cuddle, and ferrets to crawl up my sleeves.  Without their love and the laughter they give me, my life would be poorer.

4.  My job.  It's not perfect, and never will be.  However, I love doing it, and it's nice to have something solid and mine in the midst of this crazy year.

5.  Knitting.  I come back to it again and again.  When I'm happy, I knit.  When I'm sad, I knit.  When I'm lonely, I knit.  When I'm bored, I knit.  Without you, my hands would twitch and I would be infinitely less stable.

6.  The material things.  Home, food, heat, water, electric, internet, phone, nice clothes, stash yarn.  Taken for granted every day, but would be sorely missed if I could not have them.

7.  The little comforts that make the days better.  Trader Joe's peppermint Joe-Joes cookies (aka "the crack cookies"), sparkly eyeshadow, excellent loose tea in large quantities.

I hope you are as blessed as I am this Thanksgiving.

Really really really busy.

My life is feeling complicated right now, although mostly in a good way.  Big changes are in the works, but they are not yet internet safe, so I have little to say.

Here are some simple ribbed socks I knit.

Gypsy Knits yarn.  Beautiful stuff!

These were supposed to be for me, but I knit them in best friend size.  She won't mind.  I may have to buy more yarn in this colorway.

I have also started working on another pair of socks for me.

The yarn is Dream in Color Smooshy.  The color is closest to true at the bottom of the picture.

 These are Jaywalkers, except that my printer was being dumb and didn't print the whole pattern.  So sort-of jaywalkers with lots of modifications.  But they fit MY feet, so I'm happy with them.

Still pretty, though.  Lots more blue/green than this shows.

A regularly scheduled blog will return after New Year's.  At that point, I should be able to discuss all the big stuff.  And there will, no doubt, be lots more knitting.

I've been busy.

It's not much of an excuse, even if it is true.

I've been knitting.

It's a scarf in poor light, but you can kind of see the sparkles.

And another scarf out of this:

I swear it's more yellow and less green in real light.  The scarf is pretty and soft.

I finished a pair of socks.

Seriously, the colors are terrible in these photos.  This is a basic sock made out of Panda Cotton.

I've knitted most of another pair of socks too, but those are at school and I don't have a picture.

Oh yes, and one other thing.

I got engaged last weekend :-)

The love of my life Kevin proposed this past weekend.  In case you're wondering, it's a sapphire.  He's a geologist and I quote, "Diamonds are boring.  They're just carbon."

We are stupid happy, and I've been busy.  Happy November :-)

Vocab Update

I was at the school soccer game last night.  Guess what my students were yelling at our team . . .

Can you guess?

No really, can you?

And I quote, "Cut off their nether bits!"

I have created a monster, and I really really like it :-)

New vocabulary use in 7th period.

My students have been learning new words this year.  This is not terribly surprising, but in addition to all the words I WANT them to learn (distance, displacement, etc), they are also learning things by listening to me speak.

A few weeks ago, I foolishly taught them the term "vertically challenged" (we were discussing political correctness).  They all agree that this is way worse than just being called "short", so of course they remembered it to call other people.  A good insult is not to be wasted, especially not one that is unlikely to send them to the dean.

Then, today, I used the term "nether bits" in class (We were talking about the metric system.  Of course I used the term "nether bits".  I have no idea why you're looking at me funny.)  The kids thought this was the best term EVER, and kept giggling and saying "nether bits" to themselves the whole period.

And then my two smartest boys started thinking about insults.  And so, today in class, one boy said to another, "You have vertically challenged nether bits!"

If I ever stop laughing, I need to decide if I think this is a good thing or not.  Looked at in the right light, this might just be education.

Student teacher

I now have a student teacher.  For those of you who don't know, teaching is sort of like medicine.  The only way to get good at it is to do it.  While the theory classes are very interesting, and the stuff on brain development is good to repeat to yourself when you're listing reasons not to murder teenagers, but it doesn't ever tell you what to do in the classroom.  When do you have the power struggle to make a kid move?  When do you issue a detention?  When do you kick a kid out?  What do you say to kid who makes the double entendre comment that starts the whole class giggling?

So when you're done with those theory classes, an experienced teacher lets you come in and spend time with their classes, and eventually take over the class for some number of weeks.  I have now been cast in the role of experienced teacher (5 years!).  This man who will be working in my classroom with my kids is an experienced chemist and patent lawyer.  He is very competent in his previous work.  But now, he has to learn how to entertain and manage kids well enough that some of his vast knowledge and experience passes from him to them.  And I have to help him do this.

I hated student teaching.  There were a number of reasons, very few of which are internet appropriate.  But I will say that that step from competent person to newbie was incredibly hard and humbling, and I did not feel well supported when I took it.  I still learned more than I ever believed possible, some from the adults I was working with and more from the kids.  So, in honor of this step of teaching an adult, I will list some of what I learned in student teaching that still shapes my teaching today.

1.  I am an adult, and they are children.  My self esteem is not, and should not be, shaped by what they think of me.
2.  Each day is a new day.  No matter how horrible the child was yesterday, be happy to see him/her again today (even if I'm really not).
3.  Be clear in your expectations.  I must explain exactly what I want -- they cannot read my mind.
4.  Having secret standards is unfair.  All of the basis for grading must be explained up front.
5.  Don't yell.  When I yell, my voice gets high and squeaky and I just sound silly.
6.  Yelling in German is better.  Any language they don't speak would probably work.
7.  Be organized in my lessons.  Kids appreciate a coherent flow of topics.  Jumping around is not helpful to anyone.
8.  Give frequent grade updates.  Kids want to know how they are doing, and will forgive me a great deal if I give useful feedback.
9.  Go to events the kids are in.  They love seeing teachers there.

And most important of all:
10.  CARE ABOUT THE KIDS!!!!  If they know I care about them, they will walk through fire for me.

And to finish up, one great kid story:
    When one of my students, a kid who would rather distract than learn most days, saw the student teacher in the classroom on Friday, he pulled me aside.  "Is this a day where I have to be especially good?"  "What?" I asked him.  "Are you getting graded?  Do I have to be good?"  He thought it was my review day, where I was getting graded by the administration, and wanted to be sure to be good on that day.  When I explained that this was not that day, he replied, "OK, but just tell me when."  It was a good moment :-)

I love teaching, and hope my student teacher does too.

Dinosaurs are cool.

In lieu of actual content, here are some cool dinosaur links.

They might rename the stegosaurus.  This makes me sad.  Why must we make the nomenclature match?  There are so many other exceptions that I think they should make an exception for this one.

The horniest dinosaur ever.  Am I a twelve year old boy that this makes me giggle?  I blame it on my students.  They probably won't mind.

And a cool evolution article here.  One breed of lizard is moving to live birth instead of eggs.  I love evolution in action.

All of my other words went to the twenty parent phone calls I made today.

Knitting! What a good plan!

Seriously, work really puts a cramp in my knitting time.  That fairly minor complaint aside (as I like being employed and mostly like my job and love my kids), I have finished something.

So here it is:  Argus Shawlette on ravelry.

Hanging over the back of a chair, awaiting blocking.

I knitted it out of Tahki Yarns Fiji, which is a silk blend.  The pattern was written for fingering weight, but this yarn is probably slightly bigger than worsted weight.  I used a 10.5 needle (US) and only did 2 repeats of chart A rather than the 3 called for in the pattern.  Otherwise, it was made according to the directions.

What I am not doing well is knitting for myself.  This is for a friend who needs surgery, but can't get it because she and her husband lost their health insurance, and she's having trouble finding grants to cover it, etc.  I will block it this weekend (the only place is my bed, and I don't have time to get it set before I leave for work, and the weekend should work) and get it in the mail early next week.

And maybe I'll even finish that pair of socks for me that I have been working on forever.

Conversations with teenagers

As full time employment with teenagers is slowing eating my brain, let me share with you a selection of the conversations I had with some of my students today.

Backdrop:  Class -- Physical Science.  Age -- mostly HS sophomores.  The educational objective was to teach kids to write really good hypotheses in the If . . . then . . . because . . . format.

First period:  We are reviewing an experiment we already did to determine if boys or girls had better reflexes, and rewriting the hypothesis for it in the new format.  All of a sudden, a boy off to the side of the room sighs loudly and with great satisfaction and says, "Spiderman."  The joy in his voice at that moment is hard to convey, but it was clear that Spiderman made him happy.  We all stopped and stared.  He then said, "I didn't mean to say that out loud.  It's just what I think of when I think of reflexes."  We stared a few more seconds and then returned to what we were doing.

Fifth period:  In the hallway before class started, a girl came up with her hand in the air, "Whaz up?"  I responded with the overly proper, "Hello" as I returned her high five.  "Don't say hello.  You're supposed to say 'what's up?' back!  Cmon, say 'what's up?'"  So I responded with, "What's up?"  "The ceiling!"  She ran into the classroom giggling.

Eighth period (the last of the day):  We are talking about the reflex experiment again, which involved dropping and catching a ruler, and all of a sudden, "F*ck you, Ruler!"  It is a good natured boy who is waving a ruler in the air, and said with great veahmence.  I told him to use more appropriate language in class and he looked at me, "What are you talking about?  I never said that."  He continued to deny all knowledge, and did it convincingly enough that my teenage liar radar did not go off.  I think he really had no idea he'd yelled that.  He did stop waving the ruler.

So with those pieces of wisdom, I'm going to go find a ruler to wave at the ceiling and think about Spiderman.  Or knit.  One of the two.

My least favorite part of teaching.

Paperwork.  Really.  I hate the stuff, and it breeds on my desk at night.

This morning, I got to school at 6:15 am to try to get caught up.  I worked until the kids arrived at 7:40.  I worked through my lunch period.  I worked while the kids were in class (relatively independent work today) and I'm STILL not caught up.  I am, however, less behind.  And I have not been neglecting the paperwork terribly.  It just exploded on my desk and inbox.

Here is a quick rundown on some of the paperwork I need to keep and manage.

1.  Grading.  This one is both necessary and my own fault.  I need to see student work.  How else can I see if the quiet girl really understands or is just busy daydreaming about the cute troublemaker in front of her?  This is where I can interact with student's work, and really see what they've learned.  And it had better be important, if I'm going to take the time to grade it.

1b.  Grade program back-ups.  See #2.  This was the ultimate goal of today's early arrival -- to get current on grading and make a back-up.

2.  Class lists.  I teach in a district with a high rate of transiency.  This means that even though this is the THIRD WEEK of school, in the last two days I have gotten 5 students who did not come before this week.  I had 4 new kids last week.  Today, a student was moved from my seventh period class to my first period class.  The exciting thing about that is that our grades are online, but when a kid is transferred, the grade does not transfer with them, and in fact totally disappears off the computer.  I will need to reenter this student's work into the program, and I did not make a recent back-up (see #1b).  Good thing I haven't handed the work back yet, isn't it?  Even more mysterious, there was a kid today who was somehow totally removed from the system.  I discovered this when calling students up to show them their grades, and I missed the kid.  When he told me, I realized he and his grade had vanished from the computer.  Hopefully, guidance has him sorted out again by tomorrow.  And his grade comes back.

3.  Attendance book.  Technically, I should be taking attendance every day in this fabulous computer program we have.  And I do.  However, the program is often behind reality.  Also, when a kid moves between periods, their attendance data also vanishes.  For this reason, I keep my own attendance record. From a legal standpoint, this is correct.  I should have a paper copy of my attendance records written in my own handwriting.  I don't do it that way.  I keep mine on excel so I can cut and paste and color code as needed.  I refuse to write out a paper copy and have to change it 17 times over the first month.  Keeping up even in excel can be no small task.

4.  Parent call log.  As I teacher, I am expected to call parents frequently.  I call when things are going well.  I call when they're going badly.  I call when the child has missed more than a few class days.  In some districts, there is an attendance secretary to do this for teachers (especially in high school where I have 100+ kids per day), but our school cannot afford that luxury.  And whenever I call a parent, I need to document it.  What number did I call, who did I talk to, what did I say, and did they say?  Because if that parent gets a report card and comes in and yells at the principal that they had no idea their child was failing (or skipping or whatever), I need to be able to prove that I did contact them.  Or at the very least left 5 voicemails for them at a number the school told me was theirs.

5.  Sports grade updates.  Eligibility for high school sports is dependent on grades.  Here in IL, you need to be passing 4 classes to be able to play sports.  (Yes, that standard is as ludicrous as you think it is.  Talk about setting the bar low).  This means that at random intervals (almost never on a consistent day), all of my athletes come running up to me with little cards that I need to write their current grade on at a moment's notice.  Now, I'm all for being pretty up to date on grading, but if we've just taken a quiz or turned in a major project, it may be a few days before I can tell you for sure what your grade looks like.  Plus, having to take class time to look up and fill out grades for 5 students cuts into my teaching time.  It is important, but irritating.

There's other stuff too, but this is what I was doing today.  All of it has a purpose, but it can get pretty overwhelming.  I think I need to go sit in bed and knit.  And try again tomorrow.  Maybe I'll even make it to e-mail tomorrow . . .  Hope springs eternal.

This whole day job thing really interferes with blogging.

School is back in session.  We are well into week 2.  The 90F heat in our un-air-conditioned building has been lots of fun.  When I get home, I want to do nothing but nap with an ice pack and drink lots of ice water.

I shouldn't whine, though, because I have things going pretty well.  About 90% of my students are starting the year off well, and seem to be engaged in the class.  They like the meditation exercises we're doing, except the one kid who refuses to do them because he "likes being mad all the time".  There has been minimal whining by students, even when I've been making them learn how to take notes.  So far, so good.  Two of my five classes have earned seating charts (as opposed to picking their own seats), but that's par for the course.  The parent I talked to today seemed as upset as I was that his child had missed half of the 8 school days so far.  Overall, the year is looking pretty good.

I have not been knitting much, and need to figure out where it fits.  I did start another shawl for a friend who is having some BAD STUFF in her life just now.  So much for knitting for me, but at least it's not Christmas knitting.  For the record, shawls go a lot faster on size 11 needles than size 4 needles.

The cucumber plant is still fighting the squash for garden domination.  The major casualty so far is the basil plant.  Completely covered with cucumber vine, it's giving up the fight, but still making the garden smell good.  A woman who owns a garden center told me that she had heard that squash and cucumbers interfere with each other's pollination, and I might not get a lot of fruit.  Obviously, that was some other species of squash and cucumber because today I took 3 more giant squash and 14! lemon cucumbers out of the garden.  Do you live in IL and want cucumbers that look like yellow softballs?  Because if so, have I got a deal for you!  I'm taking 6 to work tomorrow to foist off onto my coworkers.  And it's still a good thing I like veggies.

And now, my bed is calling me.  Teenagers require a lot of energy and 4:30am comes fast.  Good night, and sweet dreams of too many vegetables :-)

It's all my mom's fault.

Well, also the tai chi lessons.  They were definitely a factor.  And I suppose I just like being barefoot.  But shoes never fit me right.  And Mom never made me wear uncomfortable shoes, so we're back to her again.  I guess it's a chicken or the egg kind of problem.

The problem, of course, is why I fell over during 5th period today.  I'm fine (not even a bruise except to the ego), and the kids got a good laugh out of it.  I did too, really, but falling over in school is not a good plan.  Not unless I want the "crazy teacher who falls down a lot" label.  I have "Crazy Teacher" nailed, but I could do without the second part.

Very simply, I was going to put some papers in my organizer next to phone, and my foot got tangled in the cord, and I fell over.  But at the root, it's my mom's fault.

I have excellent balance, and am extremely sure-footed.  But there is a caveat:  it only works when I'm barefoot or in socks.  As soon as shoes go onto my feet, I turn into a bumbling idiot.  Think Clouseau from the Pink Panther.  I have no idea how to walk, I trip over my feet, I tangle them in cords, I bump into stuff.  And I blame brain plasticity.

Brain plasticity has just recently been recognized as a reality.  Even as an adult, our brains change all the time.  Whatever we use gets more of our brain.  Whatever we don't use, gets less.  Our brain maps are constantly changing.  As a child, my mom taught me to "see with my feet".  I learned to pay attention to signals from the nerves in my feet, which means that I allocated more neurons to foot input.  Added to that, I have never worn shoes at home.  As soon as I walk through the door, I lose the shoes, so I have reinforced that map over and over and over again.

Wearing shoes, far fewer signals get to the brain.  In some people, probably most people, this is no problem for their balance.  Most people get their balance cues visually as well as from their vestibular system.  But I learned to balance in tai chi class, which I started when I was 13 and took regularly for 8 years.  In tai chi, you are barefoot or wearing slippers and are constantly focusing on your feet to ground your attention and energy.  I tend to do this with closed eyes.  I use signals from my feet to balance.  Hence, shoes are a problem.

I guess the solution is to spend hours and hours teaching myself to walk in shoes, but I really don't want to.  Although if I fall over in class again, I may have to rethink the idea.

I met some students today.

The kids seem fabulous.  I have some whiney complaints about things, but the fact that the kids are going to be great trumps them all.

I have garden pictures on my phone, but have been too lazy to go get them.  I worked on a sock some today, but have no pictures of that either.  All in all, bad blogger.  But hey, I am not abandoning the attempt, so that's got to be worth something.

Have a link of the importance of pets on human evolution.  It's an interesting thesis, and I do love my furry things, so it's good to have some further justification of their importance.

I should post something

School started.  I have had lots of training over the last two days, as well as a discussion of the importance of handwashing after getting bitten by a rabid bat.  Yes, you read that correctly.  We also meditated for two hours, because we will be teaching meditation to the students this year, 30 seconds to 3 min at a time.

So, in lieu of any actual thoughts, here is a medieval castle being built in France.  Having spent many hours with David Macaulay's Castle book as a child, this is pretty cool.

Tomorrow, there will be pictures of my cucumber plant eating the other garden plants.

My blog won't let me post comments.

Does anyone know how to fix this bit of weirdness?

Nook limitations

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I have about 7 million family obligations in the next week.  I also start the school year again.  So instead of working on anything for those things, I am knitting and playing with my Nook.  I have 48 more hours of denial, and I'm not wasting a second of it.

For the record, the Nook is a pretty spiffy gadget.  It's taking some time for the touchscreen and I to make friends, but that's my problem, not the machine.  It's easy to read on, intuitive to use, comes with sudoku, and the Barnes and Nobles free book selection is interesting, if eclectic.  The only other problem I've encountered is a desire to shake it above my head like an etch-a-sketch to see if the words disappear.  So far, I have resisted the silliness.

However, I have discovered a limitation.  In the ebooks you buy, you can bookmark a page and highlight specific lines.  I, of course, was pondering the knitting applications, and thought, "How great for a pattern! I can mark the line I'm on and come back to it later!"  Not so.  On pdf files, I can bookmark, but not highlight.  There is no way to mark a specific line.  This means that knitting patterns will continue to require post-it notes or paper print outs.  Not the end of the world, of course, or even a reason to dislike the Nook.  And I like post-it notes -- I'm a teacher.  It's in the job description.

So if you need me in the next two days, I'll be the one with post it notes stuck all over my Nook, swearing at blue dental floss as I continue to knit on the Maelstrom shawl.  Against advice, I have not yet purchased pointier needles, nor have I found my stitch markers.  But there is a lifeline in the lace at row 60 (264 stitches in a round), so there's hope for me yet.

Pictures will follow when I remember during daylight hours.

Friday the 13th

I am not superstitious, but if you are looking for new and different things to be worried about this Friday the 13th, here are my suggestions for the day.

First and foremost, having a plant start to grow inside your body.  Ewww.

New and scarier diseases.  Bacteria are awesome, in a disturbing kind of way.  And viruses . . . MHAAA HAAA HAAA!  I think being an epidemiologist would be an awesome job.  

And just because . . . .a very beautiful galaxy picture from Hubble.  This has nothing to do with Friday the 13th.  I just love the photo.  

May you have a calm and uneventful Friday the 13th.  I'll be in bed with my new Nook.

Holy Vegetables, Batman!

I just looked at my garden for the first time in a few days.

First tomato, two lemon cucumbers the size of my fists, . . . 

twenty (!) serrano peppers, . . . 

and three yellow squash.

The super bright sunlight has washed out some of the colors in these veggies, but wow!  As a size reference, that block is about 12" deep, so the squash are about 7" long folded and about 4" in diameter at their widest point.  And for the record, I have only one plant of each type of veggie, and all of them are still producing flowers.

Any suggestions for the serrano peppers?  I appear to have some to spare.

Education -- what's the point?

There is an unspoken philosophical debate going on in this country about the purpose of education.  The question is this:  Is the purpose of education to sort out the superior students or is it to teach everyone?

Historically, everyone needed to know enough to read the Bible, write letters, and keep track of their finances.  There was a heavy focus on memorization and handwriting.  Only a very few students went on to higher education.  However, the majority of jobs in the 1800s and earlier did not require any more education than this most basic level.  Education sorted out the few who would continue to college and professions.  Sorting was the goal of the day.  There were wonderful people such as Catherine Beecher and Booker T. Washington, who advocated for further education for women and minorities (believed unlikely to ever need an education), but they were the exception rather than the rule.

Education progressed in many ways, but up through about the 1950s-60s, sorting still remained the primary goal of most public education.  The brightest few were identified early in the schooling process and pushed up through the system to finish high school, and possibly attend college.  Everyone needed the basics, but the bright students definitely received more time and attention.  For the record, most of these favored few were white males.  Black students were separated into inferior schools, although the historically black colleges did serve the brightest from that system.  Girls have a mixed history in school, and I'll leave that for another day.

Obviously, the statements above are huge generalities.  There are, no doubt, hundreds of examples of teachers and schools that did not operate in this manner.  Overall, though, the institution of public education was not terribly concerned with slower or uncooperative students up until this time.

In the 1950s - 60s, major change swept the nation.  Brown vs the Board of Education eliminated segregation, IDEA brought kids with special needs out of institutions and into the classroom, and the feminist movement became active.  The law of the nation stated that every child was entitled to a free and appropriate public education.  These three things were huge in education.  Education was no longer allowed to ignore huge numbers of kids, but the structure of public schools has changed little.

Today, we have No Child Left Behind (NCLB).  The name of this law implies that sorting is out.  Education has still not really caught up.  Even the testing that school success is based on (by the law's standards) is normative, at least here in IL (PSAE for high school, ISAT for lower grades).  This means that scores are compared to other students taking the test on the same day.  The score that the most kids get is the 50th percentile, and is scored accordingly.  There is no objective standard for these tests, which means that by definition, they are competitive exams.  I can rant lots more about that, but I'll save that entire rant for another day.

For now, the question is, as it has been for the last 50 years, what is the purpose of education?  How do we educate everyone without neglecting the top students?  Does sorting have a place in education?  There aren't simple answers to these questions, but until we talk about them, no answers can be found.

Busy day today

But here's a video about how to pluralize the word "octopus".  This is in honor of my friend Dylan's soon-to-be-born baby.

As one cephalopod fan to another . . .

For K -- some science content

I recently came across this article via twitter.  It summarizes some interesting research that was done by Professor Stanislaw Karpinski of the Warsaw University of Life Sciences about plants.  Most of us learned in school that plants were non-thinking creatures with no nervous system.  I've taught biology before and taught that.  However, this research causes us to question that assumption.


Professor Karpinski and his team shone light at one leaf of a plant and looked to see what happened in the rest of the plant.  Specifically, the parts of the plant being kept away from all light.  What he found is that the entire plant reacts to a signal to one leaf.  That means that the plant can transmit information throughout itself.  That means a nervous system of some kind.  Not like ours, of course -- we'd have recognized that sooner -- but a nervous system nonetheless.


In plants, it seems the role of the nervous system is played by bundle sheath cells.  I always thought that bundle sheath cells were a rather boring structural and protective cell that surrounded the plant transport system (except in C4 plants, but that's a topic for another day), but apparently not.  They send the chemical signals throughout the plant, starting a cascade of reactions.


Even more interesting, different signals get sent depending on the intensity and wavelength of the light (how bright and what color).  A blue light sets off a different cascade than a white light.  It seems that the purpose of these cascades is to activate different parts of the plant's immune system.  The characteristics of the light are associated with different diseases, and the plant defends against the appropriate ones for the season and area with that light quality.


This means that the plant "remembers" different kinds of light.  Is this decision making?  Is it instinct?  Could we say that a plant has "racial memory"?  Where does memory lie in a plant?


While this research is very new, and obviously needs to be confirmed by other sources, it does call into question our assumptions about what intelligence is, and where it exists.  I love finding out that the world is even more strange and mysterious than we thought it was. . . .

Laceweight -- an aid to humility.

Normally, I consider myself to be a pretty competent knitter.  Give me a project, and I can pretty much do it.  There are a few notable exceptions (a sweater for me), but I am working on that.  So when some very good friends gave me free laceweight yarn from a thrift shop, I jumped at it.

It's a 2-ply weaving yarn, at least according to the English translation of the Finnish website.  However, it sure looks like laceweight to me.  Now, I have knit lace before, but with fingering weight yarns, and that was fun.  So I took this lovely stuff, and found this (ravelry link).  It's a gorgeous lace shawl, and I have a mile of teal yarn.  What could possibly go wrong?

Have you ever tried to cast on with laceweight?  This stuff is thinner than my dental floss.  It took me about 4 tries and three different kinds of needles to cast on 8 stitches, and join without twisting.  The language was not teacher-appropriate, to say the least.  I now understand why lace knitters want pointier needles, and I may have to buy some in the near future.

So I finally succeeded in the cast-on.  Then, the set-up pattern.  The first 18 rows went fine.  But then some stitches slid off the needle, and I'm doomed.  I'm doing this magic loop, and one half of the shawl now has 47 stitches, and the other 57.  I have no idea what I did or how to correct it.

The shawl so far.  About 3 hours worth of work.

I will be frogging this shortly.  The question is, do I restart it now?  Restart it after I buy pointier needles?  Give the laceweight away and deny all knowledge?  Does it get better?

New blog

What to say?  How to start a new blog?

Let me introduce myself.  I am a knitter, teacher, and scientist, sometimes in that order.  I work teaching science to high school students.  I am looking for a forum to discuss these three topics.

Today:  Knitting, specifically gift knitting

I often find myself knitting for other people.  Recently, I finished a top down raglan for the baby of a woman I work with, a baby kimono for another friend who's expecting, and fibonacci socks for my brother's graduation from college (big stupid size 11 boy feet!).  I love my family and friends, and they are appropriately grateful knitwear receivers.  The pictures are from my camera phone, so excuse the poor picture quality.

I need to get a better camera, but it's a baby kimono, I swear.

About 10 different leftover sock yarns went into these.  Wild, but he'll love them.

So here's my dilemma . . . Do I have to knit for everyone for Christmas?  Because if so, I need to start now.  But I don't want to.  As much as I love them, I want to knit for me . . . so what's your policy on gift knitting?  Do I need to get going on a million pairs of felted slippers, or can I start that shawl I want?