unclimber

The Sins of Forced Education

2010-03-16T18:06:00.000-05:00

Psychology Today has a blog called Freedom to Learn which is pretty interesting to me. I've linked a post before, and now I'm linking again -- this time to Seven Sins of Our Forced Education System. Like I said in my other post, this is no surprise to me and I think most, if not all of the items, were brought up by John Holt in his book, How Children Fail (this link actually gives you a preview of many of the pages). I loved that book, which I could find my copy of it and all the stuff I underlined. Alas, I cannot, but at least I did some posts early on this blog which quoted some of my favorite passages.

Back to the Seven Sins -- I strongly agree with his second premise:

2. Fostering of shame, on the one hand, and hubris, on the other.

It is not easy to force people to do what they do not want to do....Children are made to feel ashamed if they perform worse than their peers and pride if they perform better....Those made to feel excessive pride from the shallow accomplishments that earn them A's and honors may become arrogant, disdainful of the common lot who don't do so well on tests; disdainful, therefore, of democratic values and processes (and this may be the worst effect of all).

While I agree that what happens to those who don't measure up is terrible, what happens to those who do is not much better. I think tracking can be useful, but it's not without it's downside. I wonder if some of these successful students don't internalize the constant competition and become somewhat fearful that they will find someone better, smarter, or more accomplished. To look at others as a constant source of competition strikes me as a barrier to healthy relationships. But I'm no pyschologist.

Homeschooling Preschool

2010-03-11T10:08:00.003-05:00

I wrote this article for The Organization of Virginia Homeschoolers and it appeared in the Summer of 2008.

Teaching Ourselves to Read

2010-03-10T13:11:00.000-05:00

I admit I don't find this article very interesting because it has been my experience. My response is more like, "yeah, so?" than, "wow, are you serious?"

My oldest started reading somewhere between ages 3 and 4, I think. My attempts to use a reading program (Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons) did not go well. The first few lessons were fine, then she got bored and I got impatient. The CD case of ABBA Gold seemed to provide her more help than reading instruction. I would play that CD in the car, Suzanne asked to look at the case and I'd hand it back.

My youngest started reading around the age of 7. Unlike her sister, she was not a big fan of being read to. However, she started writing earlier than her sister did, so she was working on her own things, at her own pace.

It's nice to have them both reading now. Now go educate yourselves, kids, and let me know when you need me.

Federal Resources for Educational Excellence

2010-03-10T10:51:00.002-05:00

I fell down the rabbit hole again. While writing my last post to share a link for preschool resources, I wandered across this link. It has extensive listings and I don't always trust the Federal government when it comes to education, but there might be something useful in there, so I'm posting the link here.

Ed Pubs Resources for Preschoolers

2010-03-10T10:48:00.002-05:00

The Helping Your Child series were not designed with homeschoolers in mind, I'm sure, but they are free publications available from the Federal government. They are now available as pdf files, but when my kids were little, I ordered printed copies of the books. They may be useful in their suggested activities and worth a look.

If I recall correctly, I found the Helping Your Preschooler and Helping Your Child Learn Mathematics most useful.

No Us v. Them in Homeschooling, please

2010-02-13T17:06:00.001-05:00

The Diosa Dotada Endeavor has a number of posts in response to the Robin West article -- I believe this was the first post on the subject on this blog. My focus is to archive my comment on my blog, but her response is well worth reading.

And now to my comment

fantastic response! I’m so glad you had stats to back you up. Here Robin goes on and on about the Fundamentalists Protestants and yet she uses their (HSLDA and NHERI’s) data — to the degree she uses any data, which is very little.

I really tried to read her article, but the opening page was alarmist and emotional and then she makes a rather bland statement that her thesis is about regulation.

I am not a Fundamentalist Protestant but she clearly has an ax to grind against them – but even her concerns make no sense. On the one hand, they can raise a political army, on the other hand, they are uneducated and lack skills. Which is it? Are they a potent enemy to reckon with, or hapless and ignorant?

She wonders why no one is worried about the looming scourge of homeschooling. Well, maybe because it’s not a looming scourge? Maybe what’s going on in the public schools is of greater concern? Maybe people are worried about health care or the war on drugs, whether homosexuals can marry, international foreign policy, or anything other than whether or not the local homeschoolers are teaching creationism. Honestly, I’m not a creationist but I really can’t see why anyone cares so much as to whether people believe in evolution. Maybe I feel this way because I’m not a scientist, but it’s just not had a huge impact on my life.

I’m also wary of anyone who wants to start and us vs. them with homeschoolers. Oh, you liberal types, you’re okay, it’s THEM we’re worried about. Well, freedom is freedom, no matter what anyone’s personal, political, and religious views are.

Oh, and can someone please explain to me why the critics love to carp on teaching credentials? What do they actually do, teach classroom management techniques? Tell you how to get a large, diverse group of students with different learning abilities interested in a subject? Someone please explain to me how a certification which helps teachers teach classrooms of kids is necessary in a homeschooling environment. But then she lobs “over-educated” at us — which is it? Can we teach our kids or not? Or is it just that she thinks we should be doing something else (like contributing to the sexist media machine, consumer-driven culture by having more spending power with the money we earn at jobs that are more deserving of our time than our own children)?

Thanks for the forum! and thanks for your posts and the dialog you’ve begun with Robin.

Homeschool on! Ever seen that t-shirt “The Revolutionaries will be homeschooled!”? I love it, except that it drives me nuts because shouldn’t it be “The Revolutionaries will have been homeschooled.” Opps, must be showing my over-education!

by Marjorie December 22nd, 2009 at 6:44 pm

Fleshing out the feminist bitch-slap in the Harms of Homeschooling

2010-02-13T17:00:00.000-05:00

Just for the sake of archives on unclimber, since I refused to link myself when I made the comment.

This is a link to The Diosa Dotada Endeavor, another post that discussed the aforementioned Robin West article and another place where I left a comment. Many homeschoolers and other commented and once again, my comment is not easily found (though it is easily linked).

yeah, I, too was wondering about the “over-educated” comment of hers. How is it a feminist professor can label some women as over-educated and what makes her different from the paternalistic professor of the 60s who pointedly asked the women in my mom’s class why they were there, taking up a seat that could have been filled by a man? The irony of it all. And I’m a homeschooling mama who is, was, and always considered herself to be a feminist. Why do some feminists think that all women need to listen to them and do as they say and what makes that any different from the current paradigm of male-domination? Sorry, but I don’t see it as an advancement for women to stop doing what men say in order to do what some “feminist” tells us to do. Makes no sense – isn’t feminism about women thinking for themselves? And I choose homeschooling for my daughters.

by Marjorie December 22nd, 2009 at 6:27 pm

The Scary, Scary Harms of Homeschooling

2010-02-13T16:45:00.001-05:00

At the risk of giving publicity to an article I don't agree with, I am posting about a slightly dated article The Harms of Homeschooling by Robin West. A friend of mine called my attention to the article and pointed me to a blog post commenting on it. I was quite pleased to see that West herself commented on the post and she did so in a way that suggested a far more reasonable mind than her original article. Despite my normally shy and reserved demeanor, I couldn't help commenting on it also, within the comments section of the post. The comments continue, because I just received notice of another one, which is what reminded me to write this post.

When I first read the article, I was surprised that it was published and even more surprised that it was written by a law professor. It was very alarmist, not terribly factual, highly anedoctal, and mostly just a rant. As anyone who has read the earlier posts on this blog, you'll know that I recognize that style of writing because it's so similar to my own. But I publish on a personal blog, not a university journal. Clearly I have some career soul-searching to do.

I just want to pull out my comment from the comment field and reprint it here because I like it, it makes me proud (up until the end when I go a bit nutty) and because there are so many comments that if I just leave this here hoping one of my blog's readers will find it, they might lose interest. I'm kicking myself for not linking this blog to my name but I was worried it would reduce the impact of my comment if it became clear it was posted by a nutcase.

- if I counted correctly, it's the 14th - this link might take you directly to it, but I've reprinted it below

Marjorie

Robin, I appreciate your comment here. I was disturbed by the alarmist nature in the PPP article and hope that the full treatment of it in your work does not sound as emotional and poorly reasoned. I’d also be interested in seeing your legal reasoning and hope you have more comprehensive coverage of the laws regarding homeschooling. As a homeschooler, I have only focused on the laws of my own state, Virginia, and have not had the time nor inclination to research beyond that. I would caution you against relying on the HSLDA (or NHERI) for your homeschool facts — many homeschoolers disagree strongly with that organization, it’s approaches, tactics, political and religious views, and how it derives it’s data.

I’m not certain why you feel that testing is the only way to give adequate evidence of education – in Virginia, it is but one option. Another option is an evaluation with an accredited evaluator. Personally, I believe in the value of learning to take tests, but I don’t see how that ensures a literate and numerate citizenry any more than a meeting with an evaluator.

I’d also love to hear more discussion about the state’s legitimate interest in education and how best to ensure that. I’m always curious to learn how private schools are regulated and why they are free from the concerns that plague homeschooling.

Finally, I think when you mention the “children of the over-educated and under-employed suburban mothers who simply would prefer to do this work for themselves than delegate it to the state” you show a fundamental lack of comprehension (and interest) for why many choose to homeschool. Simply stated, a homeschool education can be richer, deeper, and more individualized (and often has little to do with religion or conservative politics, which seem to be your greatest concerns). To comment on the mothers seems to underscore the emotional nature of the piece and sounds more like an attempt to ignite the Mommy wars than a reason why homeschooling should be regulated. It strikes me as poor reasoning that one moment you seem disturbed that homeschoolers are not accredited to teach their children and then you comment that some of us are overeducated (but I understand that advanced degrees are not teaching credentials. However, most homeschooling mothers have fewer than 30 children in their families, so perhaps they don’t really need teaching credentials. Which raises the question of what teaching credentials are and what they are for – a question no one ever seems to examine, they just seem to assume that homeschoolers should have them).

Thank you, Milton, for calling my attention to this article and for providing a forum for comments.

Scarf of many patterns

2010-02-13T08:53:00.002-05:00

This is a work in progress but I'm just playing around to see if my Ravelry notes come over cleanly with cut and paste or whether I'll get a vast wasteland of broken links.

Oooo....lookie, it's been so long since I've used blogger -- is it possible you can actually put the pictures anywhere within the post and not just at the top?

Note to non-Ravelers, if you do not have a free account with Ravelry, a few of these links will not work for you because they are to project pages in Ravelry. If you don't have a Ravelry account and you don't knit or crochet, then you needn't worry about it. If you aren't on Ravelry and you do knit and or crochet, then you should get an account. If you click a broken link, my guess is it will take you to a page where you can request an account. Or google Ravelry, or click the button on the upper right of this blog (not the post, the blog).

CO 24 per pattern
here’s a video of how to do the pattern
http://www.diynetwork.com/videos/crossover-scarf/4088.html

1/30 Used straight needles even though I use circs for everything. It was difficult for me cross over the dropped stitches on the circulars - everything felt too floppy. Also, I have found dropped stitches difficult on circs – on the next row, all the drops cross and can be difficult to slide up off the cable and onto the needle. It’s a pain to constantly stop and try to work them up onto the needle.

Modified the pattern. Following it through Row 10. I follow Row 11 as directed by the pattern except that I only wrap it 3 times to keep the length about the same with the crisscross rows (figuring the crossing eats up about one wrap). Row 12, I just drop and knit the stitches, I don’t criss-cross them.

For the next pattern repeat, I modify row 6 by slipping the 8 stitches back to the left needle and inserting the right needle into the 4 furthest stitches and cross them over. The result is that every other criss-cross row has the outside stitches slanting in opposite directions (see picture – the bottom row slants from left to right and the upper row slants right to left).

Of course, if I had it to do over, I’d alternate the criss cross rows as per pattern, which would give me a “2 diamond” criss cross row, a straight drop stitch row, then a “3 diamond” criss cross row, then straight, then 2, then 3 and so on. This project shows clearly how the criss-cross rows alternate.

I may do this when I get to the other end of the scarf, symmetry be damned.

1/31 I don’t know if I have the patience for a scarf. I like how this looks, but I’m toying with the idea of switching patterns every so often – it might be a great way to try out some new patterns while incorporating them into a scarf.

2/1 okay, I’ve calmed down and decided to focus. I like the drop stitch pattern I’ve got going for the ends. I like to be able to wear my scarf up over my head to cover my ears. This stitch pattern is too holey for that, so I’ll switch to another pattern for the middle section of the scarf and then return to my drop stitching.

After much pattern research, I’m going with the Prismatic Scarf, but I think I’ll use TexturedKnitter’s modificationfor it.

2/7 decided it’s time to switch to the Prismatic pattern. Increased to 30 sts because this is narrower than the drop stitch pattern and I want this to cover my ears.

2/9 bored. Decided to modify prismatic scarf by doing pattern rows 1 through 12 and then reverse back down to 1. This pattern narrows the scarf considerably. Adding the 6 stitches makes the scarf the same width of the first pattern.

Based on the prismatic projects, I have to say that reversing the pattern isn’t as pretty as doing it as written, but I think it works with the criss-crossy, zig-zaggy nature of this scarf.

Due to concerns about running out of yarn and boredom, I’ve decided to switch to garter (because garter is such a scintillating stitch!). Seriously, this will widen the scarf and I’ll knit it long enough to go over my head and ears then I’ll return to the prismatic scarf pattern, doing rows 1 to 12 then reverse back down to 1 and then go back to my drop stitch pattern.

2/13 did a whole bunch of rows in garter. Got the book 101 Designer One-Skein Wonders so I could look at thecross-stitch scarf. Decided to rip back most of the garter and give cross-stitch a try. Pattern is very difficult to understand and after some internet and ravelry searching, I decided to use the directions for the 2 st-left cross found here for free and for the second row, follow the pattern. This pattern was nearly impossible for me until I switched to a smaller left needle on my interchangeables (one of the things I love about interchangeables).

To be continued, because it's a freakin' scarf and it goes on forever and ever the same as it ever was, unless you go all add and keep switching patterns.

I don't know what the hell is going on but it seems pretty cool to me

2010-02-09T19:46:00.003-05:00

I was bumping around TED because a friend recommended an Elizabeth Gilbert TED Talk. I enjoyed the talk, but in my time on TED, I saw a picture of Jane McGonigal who will be speaking at an upcoming conference. Maybe because she's pretty and I wondered who she was, I investigated further - I don't know exactly but somehow I found my way to this statement on the website about her, Reality is broken, says Jane McGonigal, and we need to make it work more like a game. Her work shows us how.

Fascinating to me. I'm not a gamer but I like games and I've been intrigued by role-playing games and even spent some time researching them on-line. Too much work to learn to play one, I decided. Fascinating, but I don't have the inclination to invest the time, I thought.

So now I'm internet stalking Jane McGonigal, trying to figure out who she is and what she's up to. She has an interesting blog and that has information about some of her past games and the upcoming on-line game, Evoke. The idea of using gaming as a social tool to solve real or potential problems seems absolutely wonderful to me. So wonderful, my expression of wonder is limited to that.

Google provided me with more sites, and I ended up watching the video on this site about another fascinating game she did a few years ago, World Without Oil. Chasing the rabbit further down to hole, she mentions Clay Shirky and a recent (this was in 2008) essay he wrote about cognitive surplus - that extra time we have since we don't have to spend our entire lives fulfilling our basic needs. This led me to this post, which I partly skimmed, but from which I picked up the idea that those who mock and wonder how we have the time to do what we do (a topic I recently chatted about on Facebook) are missing something. At least we are doing something rather than passively accepting/viewing/absorbing something.

Clay writes:

....It's better to do something than to do nothing. Even lolcats, even cute pictures of kittens made even cuter with the addition of cute captions, hold out an invitation to participation. When you see a lolcat, one of the things it says to the viewer is, "If you have some sans-serif fonts on your computer, you can play this game, too." And that's message--I can do that, too--is a big change.

This is something that people in the media world don't understand. Media in the 20th century was run as a single race--consumption. How much can we produce? How much can you consume? Can we produce more and you'll consume more? And the answer to that question has generally been yes. But media is actually a triathlon, it 's three different events. People like to consume, but they also like to produce, and they like to share.

This may be where I go over the edge, but in my mind, this sort of connects up with the ideas I expressed last year about the potential of technology (okay, just Facebook) to create community/intimacy/make connections/find God. Perhaps not one in the same, but I really like people who can see the positives where others see negatives (and a waste of time). Even better, people who can not only see it, but create something that utilizes the positives. This is exciting to me. See what's there, consider the potential and give it a try. I don't know if I'll ever be a gamer, I'm barely technologically literate, but maybe I can live my life this way. Maybe that's part of what I'm doing by homeschooling.

Who knows, but I'm sort of excited about Evoke.

The Mathematician's Lament

2010-02-05T13:58:00.001-05:00

From the linked paper:

Sadly, our present system of mathematics education is [a] nightmare. In fact, if I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child’s natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn’t possibly do as good a job as is currently being done— I simply wouldn’t have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soul- crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education.

Dreaming of Solomon's Knots

2010-02-05T13:48:00.002-05:00

Looking through a crochet stitch dictionary, I saw Solomon's Knot. I think it's beautiful but didn't think much else about it until days later when I saw a woman wearing a poncho in Solomon's Knot. She couldn't confirm that that was the stitch as a friend made it for her, but I'm pretty sure it was the stitch.

I just found a youtube video on how to make it and thought I'd post it here for when I get around to making something in this gorgeous stitch.

Unschooling Math - sort of, so far

2010-01-28T10:04:00.006-05:00

Unschooling math isn't something I'm completely comfortable with, yet I find it preferable to the alternative of using a math program or curriculum. Perhaps no parent is ever completely comfortable with how their child is learning math -- every program has deficiencies and we always wonder if there is something better suited to our children out there. I'm not offering any insights or advocating my way of seeing things. I'm just documenting why I'm taking the approach I take so that in the future when I ask myself what the hell I was thinking, I can come back and see this post and say "ohhhhh...."

I don't think I'm having any new epiphanies on the matter, so maybe this is a progress report. Also, since I started this blog, Blogger has added tags, so maybe I can tag this and find it more easily than my older posts on the subject. Someday I will get around to tagging those, but for now, this will be a recap and an update of how math is going in our homeschool.

I'm a collector/hoarder of books and educational paraphernalia. I suppose that what I'm thinking is that if we have everything we could possibly need, my kids will find it and use to as it helps them best. I'm also a big believer in natural learning - that so many needed skills can be learned just through the normal course of life and that this knowledge learned through application will stick better.

Back when I first started to homeschool, I read alot about homeschooling and education. Some things that stick out in my mind were reading Mary Pride mention that her father taught her all of elementary math in one summer. Well, that sort of takes care of my concern about elementary school and it reinforces my feeling from school that most of the math seemed to just repeat itself year in/year out. I always liked math, found it to be a game and I enjoyed it. I was never in the highest math group but always did well where I was. What sticks out most in my mind was how much I loved algebra and geometry. Most interesting, though, was that I truly found high school geometry to be a reiteration of what we had been learning up until then. I suppose there was the added element of proofs, but I recall that they were very simple and fun for me. Beginning with trigonometry, I found math tedious and uninteresting. Maybe I'm just not the math sort. Luckily, I have a husband who did not find it so and went further in math than I did, so I can balance my math thoughts with his, though his thinking is very similar to mine.

After Mary Pride seemed to confirm my suspicion that there is not all that much to elementary math (or perhaps math before algebra), we found Gareth Lewis. I admit I have not read One-to-One in years, but what my husband took from it was the importance of keeping math mental for as long as possible.

Since my older daughter is such a reader, we have lots of math books in our house. A few are text books from used book sales, but I don't think anyone looks at those. I have found the E.D. Hirsch books helpful. FUN books has a great selection of math books and I've heard good things about the Jacobs series. We've also acquired the first Life of Fred book, though we may not be ready for it, but it's on my radar. Just looking through his website, I found what probably best sums up my approach to education - "Let them have a happy childhood." What he writes for how to learn the times tables is true of our house -- my husband quizzes my daughter in the morning with the math fact of the day. It's a "fact family" - what is 5 x 3? 15. What is 15/3, what is 15/5 sort of thing. We have the multiplication charts on the back of the door of our downstairs bathroom. I have tried to interest my daughter in the multiplication grid without much interest. I should try again. Just playing around with the multiplication chart and a 100 chart (easy to find on an internet search) helps to learn the times tables. John Holt recommended in one of his books to learn the tables by using a multiplication chart with blank spaces and letting the child fill it out.

I suppose what is most important to me is that my children learn to add, subtract, multiply and divide, so that is what we are focussed on right now and it seems to be happening fairly seamlessly. I buy the placemats with the tables on them, they may be ignored. I hang the hundred chart and the multiplication tables. We talk to our kids, peppering then with questions throughout the day (it's easy to incorporate multiplication into many daily tasks, especially trips to the grocery store).

Up next....

Mathematicians lament.

American Girl books.

Freedom in education blog

Homeschooling 4th grade math

2010-01-27T16:16:00.004-05:00

I'm an unschooler. It's not something I aspire to be, it's just who I am. Sometimes I think about homeschooling in some other way and I always decide against it - I really believe my children know how to learn best and they'll show me how best to help them. So, for most of the year, things are fine and dandy and we learn so seamlessly that I'm always hard pressed to demonstrate or describe what's going on in our homeschool. I guess it's like brushing my teeth, I do it every day, but I'd have to stop and think to describe exactly how I do it and I always seem to bore myself in the explanation. An odd analogy, perhaps, but perhaps I'm an odd person.

Our state requires that we give proof of progress annually. I don't mind this regulation as it seems reasonable and fairly unintrusive. To give proof, we use the California Achievement Test (CAT). We've also been using the Spectrum Test prep books, though they are far more intensive than necessary to prepare for the test. However, they give me the chance to see what my kids know (to a limited degree) and whether they understand how to take the test. I have found them very useful in the past, though I must say that their utility seems to be decreasing as my kids get older. Starting around 3rd grade, Spectrum does not seem well correlated to the CAT. If I remember correctly, Spectrum introduced long division and did not review subtraction with regrouping. The CAT at the same level did not have any long division and did have subtraction with regrouping. So now I'm careful to do more math review than the Spectrum offers and to use it as a way to introduce new math concepts without too much worry that it will be on the test.

My oldest is in 4th grade now and, as has been my habit, I ordered the Spectrum Test prep earlier this month. My youngest is in 1st grade. I pulled out the books and started the review. My oldest is learning long division. I don't use a math curriculum, an issue I am constantly reconsidering and so far have always decided against - I blame Mary Pride who wrote in her Big Book of Home Learning that her dad taught her six years of math in the summer after first grade. So, when it's time to prepare for testing, I need to cobble together material other than my own tutoring that can help my daughter. She is a strong reader and loves books, so I usually go the literature route. We have the whole E.D. Hirsch series, What Your X Grader Needs to Know. Like the Spectrum grade levels, it seems I have to consult two grades in Hirsch to get what we need. Two digit multiplication and division can be found in the third grade and fourth grade books. I have assorted other math books (text and otherwise) that I look at, but I think the Hirsch books do a nice job of displaying and explaining what is going on in the problems (how they are done). As you can tell, I am not into drill and kill, I want my child to understand what she is doing and why - not just spit back the procedure. I'm not advocating that this is the proper approach, just explaining that it's mine.

While at the library today, I also checked out some books on division that I also thought seemed to illustrate the procedure clearly. I got Division Made Easy is from the Making Math Easy series (one I was unfamiliar with). Hey, cool, there are reproducible worksheets for the book on-line. I also got Dazzling Division by Lynette Long, which looks much more games oriented but might be a way to extend the concept and make it more concrete. We shall see. As much as I love the idea of using games to learn math, I tend chafe at using a contrived "math game" and prefer to play real games. I don't know that it reaches long division, but most card and dice games at least offer a lot of practice in addition (thinking of my younger daughter here). Maybe it's time for me to try some math games.

I also picked up a couple of video tapes from the Math for Children series. I got Multiplication and Division and was very pleased with how entertaining and educational they are. My kids seemed to like them and perhaps they will even watch them a few more times. Can't hurt, right?

Crocheting Through the Darkness

2009-11-26T11:44:00.005-05:00

My church is having it's annual December craft fair and I've decided to make flower pins. This has been a great reason for me to go through the many flower patterns I've been collecting for years but have made only once or twice, because, really, what are you going to do with flowers? I've made a flower here and there and it seems that I've given most of them away. The few I have at home, I just don't seem to know what to do with. Guess I'm one of those pragmatic people who sort of need a reason for doing something (I'm a Taurus); creativity alone is not reason enough for me.

As I work through the various patterns and post my projects to Ravelry (I'm MissMookus over there), I have been thinking about what I like and don't like about various patterns. I think I'll do another post with links to those patterns, but this post is about what I've come up with as a result of my deep ruminations on the subject of yarn flowers.

First of all, I should thank Ska Mama, because it's her 5 Petal Flower on which my creation is most closely based. She generously shared her pattern on her blog and I've been having fun trying to make it, failing, trying again, succeeding, trying again, and getting it wrong in new and exciting ways.

So here is my own version of a 5 Petal Flower, which I need to rename because it sounds too derivative. How about....

"I Dream of the Number 5, in yarn"

Yarn: Lambs Pride Worsted, Victorian Pink

Hook: H (5.0 mm)

My flower was 3.25" in diameter

Chain 2

Round 1: 5 sc in 1st ch; sl front loop only (flo) to join. Mark the blo of this stitch, you'll need it later and it may be hard to find. Guess how I know.

Round 2: ch 1, sc in same st (flo); *(sc, ch1 or 2, sc) in flo, repeat from * around. Join in marked blo of Round 1 stitch. Sorry, don't know the stitch count on it, but it will resemble a pentagon.

Round 3: (same as ska mama's) *ch 2, sl st blo of next sc (again, you may want to mark this, things get confusing); repeat from * around ending with sl st in first ch-2 space

Round 4: *ch 3, 3 dc, sl to next ch-2 sp; repeat from * around. Join with sl st into base of first petal of round

Round 5: ch1, sl to back of 3rd st in petal; *ch 3, sl to back of 3rd st in petal; repeat from * around. Join with slip st to base of first petal

Round 6: *ch 3, 8 dc, sl to next petal around. Slip to base of first petal. Finish off. OR (sl, hdc, 6 dc, hdc) around.

Add a pin to the back or add to a barrette or headband and enjoy!

UMW Feminist Survey Feedback

2009-08-29T10:50:00.001-05:00

Hello,

The survey did not have a place to leave feedback, which is why I'm sending you this e-mail. I appreciated the opportunity to participate in your survey. I found it very interesting. I'm a married, homeschooling mother of two young girls and I have a JD. I left my work as an attorney for the federal government with the birth of my first and have not returned. In a completely unanticipated turn of events, I have become a homeschooling mother. I have always considered myself a feminist -- I was very active in feminist issues while in law school, volunteering with a battered women's shelter and serving on the staff of the William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law. The unpublished note I wrote was about battered women's syndrome and a proposed answer to that in the form of an abuser's profile.

While I consider myself a feminist, I realize that others may not consider me to be a feminist. In talking to one friend, she labelled me as post-feminist, I believe. My take on feminism is that it seeks equality for women in all aspects of life so that the individual woman may have the same choices are men. I strongly believe that feminism does not dictate what choices a woman should make and I have written on this subject, as least within the tiny confines of my blog.

Now, for the feedback on your survey. I skipped many of the questions that asked about what I thought a "typical" feminist might think. I don't believe in a typical feminist, in some ways, I suppose this approaches essentialism. My view is that feminism is about women as individuals, not as a group that should be told what to do. I am not interested in trading oppressive systems of male-dominance for oppressive systems of female-dominance. The survey seemed to suggest a rather narrow-minded way of thinking of feminism and that feminism is an authoritative dogma as to the thoughts and behaviors of it's adherents. The idea of feminism as consisting of a group of controlled individuals indoctrinated into group-think is disturbing and your survey's questions about what a typical feminist might think contribute to that. I realize it's part of research only but wonder if perhaps your survey if influential to the thinking of young feminists in college who are taking this survey.

Frankly, I don't see what breast-feeding, home birth, or c-sections have to do with feminism. Having the choice for any of those things is a feminist issue, but the choosing of them should not be.

The tone of the questions in the survey suggested to me that feminism is about living life in a certain way and I certainly hope young feminist college students are not internalizing that message and stand ready to accuse other women of anti-feminist activities if they don't make certain decisions deemed to be feminist choices. I'm not sure the survey questions on having and raising children aren't poised to stoke the Mommy Wars. What I want to know is where are the Daddy Wars?

I also found the questions about the roles of men very interesting and tended to answer neutrally on them. Just as a woman is an individual who should not have her life path dictated for her by dogma, so should a man be treated as an individual. I believe men are vastly different in their approaches to gender roles, house-keeping and child-rearing. Ultimately, if a woman is so timid as to be unable to approach her husband about the division of household labor and other marital issues then I fear that feminism (or something) failed her long before she got married.

Sincerely,

Exercise Tapes and Raising Girls - I just don't need a 'sexy' workout

2009-05-05T10:39:00.000-05:00

As I get bored of (and adapt to) the exercise tapes I own, I find myself exploring the offerings at the local library. I've written about my samplings before and I often find something I like.

One thing that I've noticed is how many have themes I don't necessarily want to expose my daughters to. Because I homeschool my kids, they are home when I am doing my exercise tape. Sometimes they are elsewhere around the house, engaged in scholastic, academic, challenging work, or downstairs in the basement lab exploring cures for the most dangerous pathogens known to man, but other times they want some downtime and hang out in the family room while I do my exercises. I've always been pretty aware that body image can be a problem for young girls and I want to do everything I can to show my girls that I exercise because it makes me feel good and healthy and it also helps me from injuring myself if I keep in shape (and I do my best to shuttle them out of the room when their father starts comparing his waistband to that of his brothers. Seriously, he is such a problem).

I have to say, I love my Reebox Versa Training Hi-Lo Aerobics video from 1995. Not only does it include a man in the workout trio, but the outfits and people look normal and all the messages are new-agey and not body oriented at all. I like the workout, too, but I get tired of it after awhile.

More recently, I have bought the 10 Minute Solution Fat Blasting Dance Mix. I like the tape and the workout girls look normal. I'm not too jazzed about the title segments - Simple Slimmer, Calorie Meltdown, Fat Burning Party. Nor am I too thrilled about the comments about looking sexy and working your way towards a slimmer you. It's not too bad, but I did have to field a question asking me if most women want to lose weight. I think my answer was that some probably do, but I like to feel strong and healthy. Think it will work?

Today's workout sample was Self - Dance Your Way Slim. I only did half the tape (another aspect of exercising around the kids is I need/want to keep it to 30 or 40 minutes and this is a 52 minute workout. I like the 10 minute solution series because it's easy to stop a complete workout). I like this tape, 3 very normal looking women in normal clothes. It really reminded me of the exercise classes I used to take (gulp) 9 years ago. It was fun enough, easy enough, and gave me a nice little workout (might be too simple for some). What I also liked was there was no commentary in the first half about body appearance or being sexy. Well, not until around the 30 minute mark when she started saying something about sexy.

I guess I'll keep up my exercise tape sampling, I just wish I could find more aerobic workout tapes that omit references to body appearance and sexiness. Why must everything in our culture always be 'sexy'? It's so annoying. And how am I going to field those questions from my girls?

Yeah, yeah, I know the most important role models are the parents but why must our culture make things more difficult? I think an ABBA song addressed that topic (money, money, money).

Schizophrenic Christian

2009-04-10T10:46:00.001-05:00

I don’t understand the crucifixion. Most of the time, I don’t think about it, but Lent and Holy Week and Good Friday, especially, are just so in your face about it that I feel I must have some sort of response.

Over the years, I’ve had different responses. During my evangelical years, it was so great that Christ died for our sins and gives us hope for salvation. That’s easy enough, you tow the party line and everyone is happy.

Later, it was, well, I’m not sure that really makes sense to me, but how about I chalk it up to ‘mystery of faith.’ That satisfied for a few years.

And then the darkness fell and I really struggled with the idea of the crucifixion being the ultimate passive-aggressive act. “You are bad and I have to suffer this horrible death for you. But it’s okay because, though you don’t deserve it and can never earn salvation, I’m doing this for you because I love you.” Looked at in that light, it’s really twisted. So I had to dispense with that view – not sure how I did it, but I know I wrote a blog post on it.

Then there is the metaphorical/psychological view. Christ shows us the importance of dying to our ego/our self, so that we can reach transcendence. Nice, sort of an East meets West view. That could work but for a long time I was hung up on why such a nasty story was written if it didn’t actually/literally happen. Maybe reading Joseph Campbell on the Power of Myth would help with that, but then why do I choose this particular myth? Maybe because it’s the one I’m most familiar with and it takes a lifetime of meditation on it. That is my closest understanding right now but I don’t seem to have the time or energy or interest to read Campbell or Marcus Borg. Lamb, actually, was pretty satisfying with Jesus cast as a bodhisattva to his people and the crucifixion being his reaction to the practice of sacrifice. Yes, I think truth can be found anywhere and much of my religious understanding springs from fiction (I love Susan Howatch’s Starbridge series).

I’ve said that pondering the crucifixion makes me sad and angry and confused. Sad, because it’s so much suffering – the violence is almost pornographic. Angry because, well, maybe that’s the natural response to violence and sorrow. Angry also because I don’t know why I’m so bad that some poor man/God hundreds of years ago had to endure what he did. Confused because why must there be substitutionary atonement or why there must such a useless atonement as killing? Confused because maybe I’m not a Christian and then what? Where would I go? My religion is only partly about my beliefs, a large part is my heritage and my family and, at bottom, I feel that Truth runs through everything – all religions, all ethics, everything. Which is probably something else that makes me not Christian.

But I’m active in church and that embarrasses me because I’m not sure I believe what I’m supposed to and I feel like a faker. I also am embarrassed because I know to some, church involvement is interpreted as an assertion that I think I’m holy or want to be holy or have any clue what holiness might entail. So I make jokes.

Why do I go to church? Is it because I was raised in the church or have a longing for a religious community or I thirst for God? Well, I might have all of those, but that’s not why I go. I go because I had a Baptist boyfriend in college who mentioned once that when you move to a new town, you join a church, it’s the best way to get connected and involved in the community. Strange, huh?

I don’t feel the need to church shop or religion shop because I do have faith that anywhere I go I will find myself lacking, sad, angry and confused. And maybe that is the point of faith, to lead you there so you can let go and relax a little. I really don’t know.

Ultimately, much of my belief rests on what an on-line friend, a Quaker, said to me. He said that he thinks God tells us all something and that maybe what God wants is for us to talk to our neighbors and find out what God told them. I really like that and maybe that explains why I’m posting this note.

Well, I feel better now, thanks.

10 Minute Solution - Fat Blasting Dance Mix

2009-03-06T10:41:00.000-05:00

I've checked out a bunch of aerobics DVDs from the library because I'm bored with my Reebok Hi/Lo tape from 1996. My selections involved a lot of bellydancing offerings but I wasn't in the mood today, so I tried this one - I shall call it TMS for Ten Minute Solution.

I liked it -- the leader, Jennifer Galardi, has a nice energy. She's pleasant but not overly perky and she doesn't seem to mess up her counting (a complaint I have with Denise Austin, who is also annoyingly perky). Then again, Jennifer doesn't do more than about 4 reps at a time, which is nice; she mixes the moves together, so nothing is going on "for the count of 8." The music worked for me, it wasn't popular dance music, but had a nice beat. The DVD is broken into 5 10 minute segments, each with it's own short cool-down, so you can mix and match or do the whole thing. This is key for me because my exercise time varies. The first 3 workouts are all aerobics, so it makes a nice 30 minute workout but even if I stopped after the second, I'd feel like I got some good exercise.

Her routines weren't too complicated for someone used to doing aerobics and she builds them together well, I think.

The last 2 workouts are butt/thigh and abs. I like these because they are all done standing up. I don't like doing floor work on all fours because it hurts my wrists and I feel like my balance is off (maybe that's why my wrists hurt). I had done some butt buster tape which was mostly on all fours and it didn't work for me. Anyway, I like the TMS butt/thigh work. I only did half the ab workout, I just couldn't get the moves down and I am the queen of crunches, anyway, so I didn't feel I needed this tape for abs.

I liked the women on the video, they were young and cute and I liked the outfits -- they changed at least for the first four segments, I really don't remember what they were wearing for abs. The first three aerobics outfits were super cute -- hey, if that keeps me going, so what? That other butt workout video I mentioned had the sluttiest looking workout girls I'd seen, plus, I couldn't look at their chests without feeling for them, they did not have the support they needed and they all looked like they had been surgically augmented. Anyway, that tape was some man's workout program, so go figure that his workout girls looked like reformed porn stars. Actually, being a "workout tape" was probably a cover -- slutty looking girls with big hair, huge chests, and unsupportive clothing on all fours, I was suspicious.

The main thing I did not like about this video was the "fat blasting" banners before each section. The aerobics sections are "simple slimmer," "calorie meltdown," and "fat burning party" and I think each time it had the little "fat blasting" logo. One of my daughters asked me, "Mommy, do you want to burn fat?" I just said "no, but some people might want to." My big thing is to always tell my kids that I like to exercise because it makes me feel healthy and strong and good about myself. ***

I liked this video, I may just buy myself a copy and skip the bellydancing videos. But maybe I should try them to see.

*** WaPo had an article in its Health section about watching what we say about what we eat around our daughters -- it didn't strike me as any news flash, but I enjoyed reading it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/02/AR2009030201756.html

The Message is More Than the Medium

2009-02-04T18:53:00.004-05:00

A friend of mine who reads beyond the Style section told me about an editorial in yesterdays' WaPo lambasting the banality of the status line (thanks Laura!).

I think the author of the editorial misses the point. She seems to think we're all obsessed with the minutiae of our daily lives "Is it just me or isn't it a bit presumptuous to think that if I'm scrambling an egg, you'll want to know about it?"

Well, I assume no one cares what I do. I may not even care myself. Or maybe I write it on the off chance that one of my friends will read it and laugh, maybe lifting them out of a glum mood, or making them feel that their lives at least aren't as tedious as mine.

Or maybe it's a version of cogito ergo sum. I write status lines, therefore I am. My life has some meaning because I accomplish a number of tedious, meaningless actions throughout my day and I live to greet another, full of more tedious, meaningless actions. Along the way, maybe I make someone laugh, or they share a thought or they see a bit of themselves in me and feel a sense of connection. Maybe they see nothing of me in them and feel a huge relief.

Doesn't she see the spiritual thread running through all this? We connect - sometimes in deep, meaningful ways when we debate religion or politics or values. And sometimes we connect in the fact that we love blueberry smoothies. There is God in that -- whatever you may consider God, the Spirit, the Universe, common humanity. We are not alone - not all the time, sometimes there is a glimmer that there is something more there.

Maybe status lines sometimes approximate something of a Buddhist mindfulness. I am aware that I am scrambling eggs - I am so aware of it that I type it into my status line. Whether it is read by anyone or not does not matter. Status lines offer us a chance at introspection - to look at what we are doing and state it simply, or maybe make light of it, or maybe call out to others for help. "I want to know what you think," is a message conveyed in some status lines I've seen. I've been honored for the chance to share. I've been honored when I've written in the messages and gotten a response - not just to learn something about a subject, but that someone out there cares. Ever hear of the voice crying out in the wilderness? Facebook may provide a clue as to what happens when that cry is answered. I tell you, there is God in there -- it is in each other and I see it whenever anyone takes a moment to talk to me. No matter how brief, no matter how mundane.

Interestingly, McManus' editorial appears on the page right above an editorial by Emily Yoffe. Let's go all wavy lines in a flashback of Ms. Yoffe's writing. Yoffe spent some time as a volunteer at The Claude Moore Colonial Farm. In an article about her experience, she wrote about some of the 18th century tasks she did as a reenactor and how it affected her.

But as I sat on the shaving horse and pulled, my mind began to quiet. I finished my first stick, and as I stroked its silky finish I felt an inordinate sense of accomplishment. I put in another, and I found the scrape-scrape-scrape of the knife lobotomized the usual chattering in my head.

As she closes the article, she quotes another reeanctor, "As Elizabeth Rolando says, "There is a satisfaction in the accomplishment of the mundane.""

So maybe status updating is simply a recognition that our lives, even in their smallest actions, have meaning. Just because it comes via Twitter or Facebook, does not make it less meaningful, it just gives us the chance to recognize that this same meaning occurs in the lives of others and maybe we feel connected or less alone for a moment. It's so beautiful, I wish McManus could see it.

Wow, we've got labels!

2008-11-17T15:48:00.003-05:00

I've been blogging on and off for more than four years. When I started, Blogger did not have tags or labels for posts. I really don't know when they enabled that feature but I've finally caught on that they've got it and I'm getting on board.

I know my blog is all over the place subject-wise. I am slowly labeling my posts, but please be patient with me. I have 334 posts and it's slow going for me. The numbers may be changing rapidly as I add labels (because goodness knows I don't post with regularity).

Of course, the worst part of the labeling process is deciding on the labels. Right now, I'm trying to stick with pretty broad categories, so "homeschooling" includes my philosophical thoughts on homeschooling as well as knitty gritty booklists and how we do things around here.

Allergen Labeling - Open Comment Period

2008-11-13T16:29:00.002-05:00

I was reading on the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN) that there is currently an open comment period for The Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act (FALCPA).

The FAAN website has a lot of information about this law, what it does and does not do. My attempt to summarize it is to say that it requires plain notice of whether a packaged item contains one of the top 8 allergens. What is does not require is what is known as "advisory labeling" which indicates whether the product was made in a shared facility or on shared equipment. This is important information for the food allergic because even trace amounts of an allergen (which could result from being processed on shared equipment or in a shared facility) can cause a severe reaction in some people.

FAAN says:

On September 16, 2008, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) held a public hearing on the use of advisory (“May Contain”) labeling on packaged food items. FDA has begun to develop a long-term strategy to help manufacturers use these statements in a clear and consistent manner, so that food-allergic consumers and their caregivers can be adequately informed as to the potential presence of major allergens.

Even though the hearing is over, the FDA is still accepting comments on this issue, so if you have an opinion, please share it with them.

FAAN has a FAQ section regarding this law and in this, state:

Will products after January 2006 have to label if the product is made on the same lines as peanuts or other allergens or remove the need for “May Contain” statements?

No. FALCPA does not establish standards for the use of “May contain ” or other advisory labeling statements or address the use of shared lines. FALCPA does, however, require the FDA to issue a report to Congress on this issue.

So if I'm understanding this correctly, the comments being solicited now will become a part of a report to determine whether and what action should be taken on the issue of advisory labeling.

FAAN notes:

FDA will be accepting written public comments on this issue until January 14, 2009. If you’d like to send comments to the FDA on this important issue, send an email to advocacy@foodallergy.org for instructions.

Accommodations May Not Be Enough for Peanut Allergy

2008-11-08T11:24:00.017-05:00

I was reading Peanut Free Mama and she excerpted and linked an excellent post on Rocks In My Dryer. The author of the post has her own blog, Gravity of Motion. Her post expresses a lot of my concerns and feelings.

Jane Anne addresses a concern I've had recently when she writes:

I appreciate efforts by friends and family to keep David safe. There are times when I know that people have tried to avoid peanut products but I still don’t feel comfortable letting David eat the food. Without knowing the ingredients first-hand, I cannot trust that an item does not contain nuts or contain a product that has a peanut warning. I am gracious and appreciative but I cannot take any chances.

I've recently come to realize that the sincere accomodations made for my daughter may not be enough - especially in the case of cake or other baked goods. For instance, I recently learned (by reading the bag) that Nestle Toll House Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels are made in a facility that also processes peanuts. My daughter can't have them, it's not worth the risk. Hershey's also makes semi-sweet chips and they say "In instances where we have a concern about possible crossover by an allergen we take the added precaution of including an allergy information statement on the label." Well, I'm not sure I'm willing to take that risk and common sense tells me that they also make the Reese's Peanut Butter chips, so there could be a potential mistake on the line or an accidental failure to label (FAAN sends allergy alerts all the time for accidental content, I haven't seen one for Hershey's but I see it as a potential risk that is not worth it given the severity of my daughter's allergy. Other moms might make a different decision). So, we'll have to pass on anything with chocolate chips. I recently purchased several packages of chocolate chips from Vermont Nut-Free because of this concern but I certainly don't expect anyone else to go to that level of planning, expense, or trouble.

I'm also aware that until I became aware of my daughter's allergies (and for some time even after that), I was clueless about cross-contamination issues. I've read plenty of stories since then about knives that were wiped clean after making peanut butter sandwiches and then later used to cut apart "peanut-free" items (or dipped into jelly jars). It can happen, but I'm not sure a parent whose child doesn't have food allergies would even think of it (I wouldn't have). My daughter's last allergic reaction (which landed her in the ER for several hours) was to a bakery cookie. So even if I'm told that a baked good contains no peanuts, I'm still probably not going to allow my daughter to eat it.

I share Jane Anne's plea as she writes:

Please be understanding if you try to make something allergen free and the allergic person is still not comfortable eating the item. Above all, an allergic person has to be safe and cannot take risks.
I want you to understand that we do not want to inconvenience anyone; we only want to protect our child.

My thoughts exactly. I don't want to insult anyone, but it boils down to the simplicity of NOT eating an item verses risking that my daughter will have an anaphylatic reaction. It might seem sad that she cannot partake, but it would be much sadder for her to have to leave the party, vomitting constantly, get a shot in the leg, and go to the ER, where she will have to stay for 4 hours so they can be sure her reaction is not biphasic (and that's the best case scenario on her reaction. I've read enough worst case scenarios to not want to discuss it).

Dr. Wood shares his own story about breaking his "no cookie rule" which resulted in a severe allergic reaction.

Yeah, yeah, history in the Making - Tell Me About the Dress!

2008-11-05T08:35:00.007-05:00

Like many others, I am really excited about the election results. I'm not politically active (I vote, but don't do much more than that) and I don't follow much political news. I was not watching the elections results come in over the evening (but my DH was, leaving the room frequently during Iron Man to find out the status) - really, we will know by the morning, what difference does it make?

But, I saw this picture on the front page and the foremost question in my mind is - tell me about that dress! I love it in itself - the boldness of the black and red blending, the criss-cross satin sash (calling to my mind a certain shrug I recently finished). I also love it because it has the colors of the dresses the daughters are wearing (and who doesn't love the mother of two daughters?)

It's an exciting era and though I was initially seduced by Palin's hair, I'm pretty excited about Michelle's clothes.

An Election Choice Post

2008-10-30T14:41:00.004-05:00

I was googling "coexist" and this popped up. I enjoyed reading the post about this man's election choice. It did not sound angry, it did not call anyone names or seek to villify anyone. It sounded reasonable to me (I don't necessarily agree with him, but I really appreciate him taking the time to share his thoughts). I've read so much commentary about politics recently and so much of it has been very angry. It was so nice to read something that wasn't. Plus, I always think it's cool when Christians are into triathalon training.

Halloween Candy - To Eat or Not to Eat?

2008-10-30T12:56:00.005-05:00

I got an email from a friend warning about certain Halloween candy that might be tainted with melamine. It passed muster on snopes, but a blog post for the LA Times seems to suggest it's alarmist. What's a parent to do? I don't know, I've got a kid with a severe food allergy to peanuts, so we're probably chucking it all - except for the KitKat's that were imported from Canada (peanut-free facility -- go Canada!). I'm pretty sure my daughter doesn't like them anyway, though she claimed she might. Oh, I also have Vermont Nut Free chocolates - both purchased from Peanut Free Planet. I do question whether this was necessary.

I Love It When a Shrug Comes Together

2008-10-26T10:42:00.013-05:00

I have just about finished this shrug that was my 'shrug of torment' but may become my 'shrug of triumph.'

Long story short, I began a project from the book, Knit Tricks! that involved knitting two long rectangles. Each rectangle is seamed on the top and bottom at its ends, creating a sleeve with an opening that loops around the torso. With two of them you have two sleeves with the torso loops criss-crossing your middle. It looked cute on the mannequin in the book. Well, as I knitted, I realized this would be a bear to get on and off and it was likely that it would be hot, since the torso would be double-wrapped in knit material. So I put it down for a long time. Since I had used such cheap yarn, I saw no point in ripping it to use for another project. So it sat and sat. In my time on Ravelry, I eventually found a new pattern (the Donegal ribbed shrug, first project on the left) for which I could use what I had already knit. It worked, but I heavily modified the pattern leading to the philosophical question, at what point does a design become your own and not simply the modification of a pattern? Who knows.

Yarn: Caron Simply Soft, raspberry
Needles: Size 9 (I use Denise Circulars so I am constantly adapting the length of the cord)
Pattern: heavily modified ribbed shrug with attached scarf.

Shrug:
CO 60 stitches. Knit in 2 by 5 ribbing; I chose knit 2, purl 5 as my 'right' side. After knitting 10 inches for the abandoned pattern, I switched to the shrug. I decided that I would skip the cuff in the pattern (because I'm lazy and didn't want to knit extra fabric just to roll it over as a cuff. And maybe I didn't like the look, but I think it was the laziness). I was concerned that the sleeve might feel tight around my elbow and upper arm so I increased a bit once the sleeve was about 13 1/2 or 14 inches long.

Increasing in ribbing is an interesting thing. I decided to increase on the RS by doing K1, M1, staying in pattern to the 3rd stitch from the end and then doing an M1. I did three increase rows on the RS, so I ended up with 6 extra stitches (66; sort of ironic because I actually CO 66 for the first project and ripped that out). I continued to work these 66 sts in pattern for the shrug until it looked like I was coming to the opposite upper arm (I kept measuring the shrug against myself to get a feel for when that would happen). For the decreases, I decreased stitches per RS row three times (decreasing a total of 6 stitches). For each decrease row, I knit 2 together, followed the pattern until the last 2 stitches and then ssk.

The shrug ended up being 64 inches long and then I seamed up the sleeves. The sleeves are not a perfect match and the pattern does go off course where the seam occurs. If you want to plan for a perfect match, go for it. It was too much for me and I just don't care.

Scarf:
I decided I wanted the ends of the scarf to taper and I wanted that to be a result of binding off, so I decided I would do the scarf in two parts and seam it together at the middle (which would be at the back of my neck). At one time I thought I would simply seam the middle, at other times I thought I would save myself the effort of seaming and simply pick up the stitches and knit it out the other way. I went with picking up the stitches and knitting it the other way. Don't do this, it is stupid, difficult and you end up with a shift in your knit and purl columns that cannot be reconciled. On the up side, you get an Escher-esque join at the back of your neck. I have long hair, so it won't be seen anyway when I'm wearing it. But learn from my mistakes, just seam that sucker.

CO 58. Knit in 2x5 ribbing for about 30". Again, I measured against myself, holding the CO end at the back of my neck and seeing if it was long enough to cross my torso and meet in the center of my back. At about 30", I began decreases to keep the taper. I decreased at the beginning and ending of every row. I began with knit2together and ended with ssk. I decreased until I had 16 stitches and then bound off.

After the mess that was my picking up stitches to knit out the other way, I followed the pattern until it was about 15" from the center and then started the vertical slit in the center for the keyhole. This was a modification to the pattern, which called for a horizontal keyhole which I didn't like. To make the vertical keyhole, I knit in pattern to the center, held the other half of the stitches on a holder and knit out one side for 5 inches, setting those aside. Then I picked up the other side and knit that out to match and then joined them all together again. The keyhole was about 5 inches long and then I continued in pattern. I thought it looked floppy, so I later reinforced it with single crochet around the keyhole. This reminded me too much of a Georgia O'Keefe painting and I hated the way the scarf look stuck through the keyhole so I ripped out the crochet and seamed the keyhole. My advice is to skip the keyhole. I think I'm beginning to hate the keyhole concept, which I once thought was so clever.

I finished the other side of the scarf and followed the same pattern for decreasing and then edged the scarf and the bottom of the shrug in single crochet to firm it up and keep it from rolling. To finish the shrug, I picked up stitches along the bottom of the shrug (54 sts) and knit an inch or so of 2x2 ribbing. Then I seamed this ribbing to the scarf.

The anticipated buttonholes ended up being wrong, so I moved them. I had initially thought I would put buttons and button holes on the ends of the scarf but in holding is up to myself, it created a huge gap. But moving the location of the buttons and buttonholes will create a nice, shapely fit. It's all in the geometry, baby.

I added the buttons based on what looked best when I was fitting it. I also knit in buttonholes but found that only one of them was correctly placed. The other hole I seamed up and then added a button loop by chainstitching and single crocheting. However, when I closed the back, it had an ugly gap. So much for planning.

As an interim fix, I chained a cord on each end of the scarf, between the buttons and buttonholes and tied a bow.

I was an improvement, but I felt I could do better.

This is my final answer. I removed the buttons, kept that center tie and added cords where the top button and button hole had been. I'm satisfied with this solution. Buttons would have been fine, I really just need to put that bottom button higher.

So maybe this "pattern" stinks, but this is a 'go with the flow' garment that you fit to yourself as you knit it. No slavishly, blindly following a pattern because I'm not giving you enough of one to slavishly follow. You can thank me later. Just call me the Swedish Chef of sweater design.

Danger Lurks Everywhere for the Food Allergic

2008-10-22T12:16:00.003-05:00

yes, I am the star of my very own action-adventure film. Or maybe I'm just a supporting actor, but since I'm the mom of an allergic child, I'll put myself as the current star and realize that she will take over as star when she is older.

As I become more aware of issues involved with food allergens, I am also becoming more scared, but I'm also learning a lot. I'm confident that as I learn more, I will become comfortable with how to keep my daughter safe. And then once I'm really comfortable, she'll be older and independent and I can worry that she is kissing some boy who just ate peanut butter or she's at a party where she is eating chicken satay (I believe there are stories for both that involved fatal reactions). We'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

For the first time while grocery shopping today, I actually used my cell phone to call customer service for many of the products I was buying.

Red Baron 4 Cheese Classic Crust frozen pizza: according to the Customer Service rep (who kept me on the line awhile), this is produced in a peanut-/tree nut-free facility.

Store brand Bran Flakes cereal: (yes, this is the cereal of choice for my 8 year-old). Customer service took my name and number and said they would have to call their producer to find out allergen information and they should be able to get back to me by the end of the day. DD has been eating this for months with no problem, but I put the box back on the shelf and bought Wheaties instead -- I'll have to call them at some point.

Honey Maid Graham Crackers (Nabisco): long chat with Customer Service. Sounds like they will mark it if they think it is likely to contain nuts. She said much more than that, but I was in line at the check-out so I don't remember everything. Basically, Nabisco and Kraft are big companies and from what I have read, they are good about labelling. The Customer rep said nothing to contradict that.

I will note that it is hard to grocery shop with two kids while calling companies constantly. I look closely at labels and note that Nestle's Semi-Sweet chips are produced in either a shared facility or on shared equipment (can't remember which and it doesn't matter because, for us, it's a no go either way). I want to check with Hershey's since that was the other brand of semi-sweet chips there that was not generic. I have heard good things about Hershey's, but I need to call customer service myself.

This call made at home:
Pillsbury Customer Service: long recorded statement about allergens, referral to FAAN. Speaking to an actual rep, she directed me to the label. It's not the ingredient list (the obvious), it's not in the "contains" line underneath (obvious again), the bottom line says "may contain egg ingredients." According to the rep, that is the label that is used when the product is processed on shared equipment or in a shared facility with an allergen. Since we aren't allergic to eggs and peanuts and tree nuts are not mentioned, we should be safe.

What is Safe When You're Peanut Allergic?

2008-10-19T18:29:00.005-05:00

DD is seriously allergic to peanuts and is also allergic to tree nuts, sesame, and maybe soy.

I know I should be home baking any treat she might have but it seems so much easier just to buy packaged cookies. I'm now researching brands that are safe to eat. It involves rather strange calculations - I guess that's just risk management. It's pretty easy to avoid peanuts and maybe even peanut products, the devil is in cross-contamination.

My DD's last reaction was months ago from a chocolate chip bakery cookie, somehow it must have gotten peanuts on it or in it. Okay, so we've learned that it is stupid to feed her bakery cookies - shared mixing tools or baking sheets are enough to cause a serious reaction in our child. So we avoid bakeries - but this also means avoiding baked goods. No baked goods means no birthday cakes, no cupcakes, no cookies - nothing, not at potlucks or for snack-time or at birthday parties. I think once we get this established it will be easier, but it's a little hard for us right now. That said, her last reaction was from a bakery cookie and in the ensuing months (pretty much until right now), she has eaten bakery items, birthday cakes, cookies, cupcakes, etc. It might make one ask why restrict them now? Because maybe we've been lucky and now that we know better, how can we accept that risk when it's so easy to just NOT eat them. And really, I should just be baking cookies on a weekly basis - it's not that hard and then I have worry free snacks.

This link summarizes some study's findings regarding warnings that are on packaged goods - basically, the lowest number is 12.5% of the time items with shared equipment or shared facility warnings actually contain peanuts. Sure, it's just some study, and I think we've beat the numbers because I'm sure DD has eaten items from a shared facility more than 8 times, but maybe I'm ready to stop playing the odds.

It's not always easy to get information on packaged goods. I guess I need to be calling customer service a lot. Again, it's the cross-contamination issue. It's easy enough to see if peanuts are listed in the ingedients, but it's the possibility of cross-contamination on shared equipment or in a shared facility that causes this worry. The laws regarding labeling do not speak to the issue of advisory labels such as "may contain" or about shared equipment or facilities. The labels you see now are voluntary, just because an item is not labeled as shared facility does not mean it was not produced in one, it just means that company didn't label it. And they don't have to. This is where the equation involves factoring in brands with good reputations for labeling. (There is actually an open comment period on this law, so you might want to look into this if it's an issue that impacts you).

I've seen lots of websites arguing either for or against the safety of the basic Oreo sandwich cookie. Lots of people trust Nabisco's labeling practices. While others, as a matter of common sense, do not trust an item where one of the versions contains peanut butter since you can't really know if they are run on the same production lines and therefore pose cross-contamination risks. So, are Oreos safe? I don't know, but we've been eating them but I think we'll stop and stick to our peanut-free facility Dare cookies.

It's beginning to feel like dealing with a food allergy is something out of a Clint Eastwood movie, "so you've got to ask yourself, do you feel lucky?"

I Love Canada

2008-10-15T20:54:00.011-05:00

because it seems easier to find packaged cookies that carry the label "made in peanut free/tree nut free facility."

Since my DD is allergic to peanuts and treenuts, I do not buy products that contain them or that are labelled "may contain." I also don't buy products made on shared equipment. I'm not quite sure what to do about labels saying "processed in same facility." My allergist told me I need not avoid them because it's mainly a liability label, but I've learned from other moms that FAAN reported about a study that showed that items labeled with shared facility actually contained nuts more often then items labeled 'may contain.' What's mom to do? Not buy any of them.

The problem becomes more complicated because labels regarding same facility and shared equipment are not required. They are advisory labels. So, what if one company decides to share with me that the item was produced in a shared facility but another company doesn't have any indication of what kind of facility was used? Should I assume it's peanut free? That's a pretty risky assumption for me since my child could go into anaphylaxis. What do I do?

Well, recently, I've been buying Canadian. My selection isn't large at my local grocery stores, but there is a version of a malomar type cookie called Whippets by a company named Dare. Not only do I know it's from a safe facility, my daughter really likes them. And, she can learn French from the packaging. And, I love it, the cookies are not covered in chocolate as we Americans might say, they are "enrobed."

Riddle me this - I can find nearby Latino groceries and various Asian groceries, but why are there no Canadian grocery stores? I guess the two Canadians I know do not make a large enough population to justify the cost. Or maybe it's because Canadian food is pretty much the same, except for the nut free facility thing.

Ooooo...my husband goes to Detriot on business, I should send him with a shopping list. As I'm sure you know, the nearest foreign country south of Detriot is Canada.

The beginning of the peanut allergy

2008-10-14T18:11:00.011-05:00

I wrote this post because I've been meaning to and in response to this call for stories.

About 2 years ago, I learned that my oldest daughter is allergic to peanuts. This caught me completely off guard because she had eaten peanut butter around the age of 2 and had had no reaction that I saw. I'm not sure she ever ate much peanut butter, but I clearly recall when and how she was exposed to it (peanut butter spread on crackers given to her with my permission by a neighbor). I remember I was nervous but relieved when there was no reaction. I don't recall that she didn't like them.

I'm not sure how much peanut butter she ate later on. I think I probably bought Ritz bits peanut butter crackers, not sure if she ate them. I do remember her telling me she did not like peanut butter. She is a picky eater, I thought she was just being picky.

A month or two before she turned 6, I remember being at a playdate. The mom asked if Suzanne was allergic to peanut butter because she wanted to offer her a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie. I said she didn't like it, but she might eat it because of the chocolate chips. She ate a few bites of it. Within a half hour, she told me she felt sick. I figured she had picked up a bug and we left. She threw up a few times in the car. I don't remember much more about it - I don't think she vomited when we got home. She took it easy the rest of the day and I chalked it up to a bug.

A month or two after that, I bought some chocolate peanut butter at Whole Foods. I thought it would be great if my picky eater would eat peanut butter sandwiches. I offered her a baby-sized spoonful. She asked what it was, I told her to try it. She ate it. I asked her if she liked it, she said it was okay. I told her it was peanut butter, she got upset with me and told me I should have told her. I thought she was being a drama queen (yes, I know I'm a bad mom). She threw up. Then she got very conjested. A friend of mine's son had recently had a peanut allergy and I knew about giving Benedryl, so I gave her some (or maybe it was another antihistamine I had). I watched and waited and she threw up a few times over the course of a few hours but she seemed fine by bedtime and we put her to bed (that might have been dangerous). But, everything was fine.

I think I understood at this point that she had a peanut allergy. I talked about it at a park day and another mom overheard me and told me I should take her to an allergist and get an epi pen. I really didn't see the point, I mean, just don't eat peanuts, right? How hard is that? I even said this to my mom, I think. Well, my daughter's annual check-up was soon after so I mentioned the allergy to her pediatrician who gave me a referral to an allergist. I made the appointment and we had to wait a month or so. The allergist did a skin prick test and it came back positive for peanut - she gave me a prescription for an Epi pen and a prescription for a blood test. My daughter hates blood tests and I wondered what the point was - we knew she was allergic. I saw no point. I did fill the Epi pen prescription, but I blew off the blood test. At this point, I will fault the allergist. She did not give me any information about food allergies, not even a pamphlet from FAAN. I don't recall anything she did to educate me or to suggest that I should educate myself. It seemed very cut and dried - don't eat peanuts and peanut products.

A year later, I realized my Epi pen was about to expire, so I wanted to get a refill. I called the allergist's office and the nurse was a bit unfriendly - they always fill an Epi prescription, but she noted I had not been for a follow-up or gotten the blood test. I made an appointment and went to it. I got another blood test order and this time, we did it. My daughter handled it really well (my daughter is terrible in the doctor's office when it comes to anything that might lead to pain - it's bad). The blood test (RAST test) came back showing high levels for peanut (over 100), meaning it's unlikely she'll outgrow it. It also showed allergies to pistachios, cashews, almonds, and sesame. The allergist's office sent me the results but said I didn't need to come in. This was about a year ago. Again, no education on food allergies from the allergist.

So, up until that point, she avoided peanuts or peanut products. We still had peanut butter in the house, I still bought Reese's Peanut Butter cups to give out at Halloween. The allergy had very little impact on our life. The epi pen was in my purse, so it was with her most of the time (we homeschool).

Last February, my husband (phew!) bought her a cookie at a bakery where she has had cookies lots of times. Well, from what I gather, it was on a tray that also held peanut butter cookies. She ate half the cookie and then they came in found me (I was in a museum exhibit and the bakery was a vendor in the museum). She told me her tongue was itching her. She prepared her thigh for the epi pen. I told her it wasn't necessary and gave her Benedryl. We left the building. She started throwing up in the car (ziploc bags and used butter containers make great barf bags). She got very congested. I was very worried, but I had seen this before. She was very thirsty and kept drinking a lot of water and kept throwing that up into the bag.

We got home and she seemed okay. We put her down on the couch. She seemed sleepy so we let her rest. I had forgot that you should always put a towel under a sick child. She vomited. It was a mess, so I sent her up to shower. My husband took care of that while I cleaned up the couch. When she got out of the shower, he told her to get into her jammies and get ready for bed. I saw hives developing all over her body. I had hit my watch and wait threshhold. This was a new symptom she had not had last time. Strangely enough, I had just had my first experience with hives the week before when I woke up with them all over. I had called the nurse hotline for our insurance and they had told me to go to the ER since I had hives on my face (and facial swelling), because of the possibility that my throat could close up. So, I knew a little something about hives.

Off I sent DD to the ER with DH (she picked him over me, I wonder why). I kept listening for wheezing but didn't hear any and she did not seem to be having trouble breathing. I did not give the epi because after reading the package insert, I was a bit nervous about it and I was under the wrong impression that it was really only needed if there were breathing difficulties. I was clueless about anaphylactic shock - though from what I know now, I don't think she was in it anyway. I did give the Epi Pen to DH in case. Now I have been told by the allergist that once two systems are effected, she should have the Epi. Since her previous reactions had not required a trip to the ER, I was really trying to avoid that and I know once you use the Epi, you are off to the ER. My reasoning may be flawed, but I did have reasons for the actions we took (or failed to take).

They got to the hospital and it sounded like she got a liquid steroid. They kept her for a few hours for observation (to make sure the reaction doesn't come back aka biphasic). She came home and that was that. I don't really know why I didn't look more into the issue except that the next week she was in the hospital for stitches for a serious laceration she got while playing in the front yard. I think I was just shell-shocked.

I do have some friends who are knowledgeable about allergies and it was at this point that I started asking for more information. I learned that we should not be buying foods from the bakery, the risk of cross-contamination is too great. I learned we should not be going to ice cream parlors, those scoops are used in all different flavors, they aren't cleaned and it's possible the ice cream has bits of peanuts from being scooped with a scooper used on a peanut flavor. One friend also strongly suggested I find an allergist who made food allergy education a priority and derided allergists who merely give an Epi pen prescription and send you on your way.

I'm still not sure why I didn't do more research but maybe that was all I could handle. Maybe because her allergies were so limited and obvious - peanuts are not like milk or wheat, they are pretty obvious and easy to avoid, was my thinking. My husband has a mild tree nut allergy and he doesn't have much trouble avoiding those - it just never seemed like a big deal.

After my daughter had a trip to the stables for a horse grooming and riding activity and came back with severe facial swelling and red eyes, I decided it was time for another trip to the allergist and to start learning more about allergies. Our appointment was two-fold, it was a rather delayed follow-up to her February reaction and to get testing for environmental allergens. This time, I was a bit more prepared with questions. There is a new doctor in the practice and she answered the questions I asked and she did give me a FAAN pamphlet. We had some testing done and then followed-up with more tests -- I had a whole list of questions for the follow-up visit. This was an important lesson I learned from the yahoo group TerrificKidsWithFoodAllergies -- get your questions all set and ready so you can ask the allergist at the appointment. I think I even got some suggestions for questions I should ask.

I am now vascilating between freaking out all the time to thinking it's not that big a deal. For a long time I was assuming that since her last reactions have been pretty slow moving and have not involved breathing trouble that we would have a lot of warning. Now I've learned that past reactions are not predictors of future reactions. That scares me. So now she has a medical alert bracelet and carries and epi pen and I'm informing the adults who are with her whenever I am not.

I am trying to figure out how to be reasonable in my notification to others about the allergies without sounding like a whiner or being demanding. It is becoming obvious to me that even if you tell people of the allergy, you can not be certain that they will know about cross-contamination issues. I know I wasn't aware, even when I knew I had a kid with allergies and I certainly was even less aware before I did.

So now, I'm going through an emotional process of mourning the loss of things like going to an ice cream parlor and bakery and worrying about going to restaurants. But I also realize how lucky we have been and how a food allergy is better than a lot of conditions or diseases a child could have. I've also been spared the worry and concern of having a toddler with severe food allergies. My DD is old enough to advocate for herself and though it saddens me, it also makes me proud to see her taking responsibility by carrying her Epi Pen and declining food that she knows (or even suspects) is not safe for her to eat. She actually turned down pieces of a Hershey bar that was offered to her when she was at a recent social event (which is safe - I checked the package) and later told me she knows she can't eat food that's not from home.

By a Mom of a Peanut Allergic Kid

2008-10-11T19:00:00.004-05:00

I've been known to rail against Newsweek articles on this blog, but here's one I really liked. Well, not an article, an opinion piece. Could have written it myself. It's very hard to find a balance between asking for reasonable safeguards and freaking out because your kid could die. Probably won't, but, well, you really don't know. And this author has not seen her child have a reaction, and I hope she never does.

Overheard from the Kids

2008-09-14T13:44:00.001-05:00

My daughter: do you think my house is boring?

Neighbor's daughter: yes, because it's not clean like mine

I Like Knitted Flowers

2008-09-14T07:19:00.013-05:00

I've got this thing for flowers, but it's sort of a meaningless thing because I don't have a plan. But who says you've got to have a plan? They are pretty, so I make them. They are a welcome quick hit from other long-term projects. Also, when it's hot, they are a great thing to make. I have a hard time making hats, scarves, or sweaters with wool blends in the warm weather.

I started off with knit flowers, because that's what I did, knit.

This one is the Vogue flower, from the Fall 2007 issue of Vogue Knitting. Nicky Epstein designed it as part of her Anniversary scarf.

This one comes from Pam Allen's Scarf Style, in the Floral Trellis Scarf pattern. I used this on a shrug I made.

This pattern is free, on-line, it's the Knitty Rose and I used it on another shrug.

I broke down a bought Nicky Epstein's Knitted Flowers, but I haven't made many of those patterns. I did make the Cabbage Rose, which I was most pleased with

What killed knitted flowers for me was this lame creation, also from Knitted Flowers

Now that I've taken the plunge into crochet, I'm making flowers that way and am happier with the results.

This Week in the WaPo

2008-09-13T08:55:00.002-05:00

"Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment."

-- Cultural critic/provocateur Camille Paglia, praising GOP veep nominee Sarah Palin for "redefining the persona for female authority." Says she's still voting for Barack Obama, though.

Link - it's gonna take some scrolling

Love Song of J. Sidney McCain

2008-09-13T08:06:00.001-05:00

Dear Dems,

Here is some rope. Kindly hang yourself on it.

Hugs and kisses,

the GOP

Palin is a Red Herring

2008-09-13T07:09:00.004-05:00

A lot of people seem very upset about the GOP VP nominee. I know this is very dangerous to say, but I think it's great. It's energized the race and certainly stimulated this otherwise apathetic Independent's interest. I don't tend to follow politics, I don't find it all that interesting, but mainly, I don't find it reliable. Maybe it's because I took Political Communication nearly 20 years ago. It's mostly smoke and mirrors and rhetoric and much of my voting often comes down to a single issue.

I read a piece in Salon.com linked by a friend. I think I've already discussed it enough with her (probably too much!) so I'll just jot down my thoughts here.

We are talking about the Vice President, right? Well, I haven't read much of history, but (other than in the case of the president dying) does the VP ever really do anything? So, if McCain were elected, do we really think Palin is going to have much influence? I can't help but think it's going to be "thanks, honey, why don't you go have some fun and stay out of the way."

Also, is there anything anyone can do about Palin being the nominee? We're not campaigning as to whether she is on the ticket. She's there. Why is she being attacked so energetically? I think these energies can be used better elsewhere and certainly more productively.

I can only see the Salon.com as a piece that will be used by conservatives as evidence of how Dems cannot control their emotions, how they cannot speak coherently without namecalling, and how they are spinning their wheels. From my view, this makes the Right look good. Why would you want to do that?

What does Palin's family have to do with her politics? Attack her politics, but leave out the Down's Syndrome baby, the pregnant teen, the 3 day maternity leave. I think there is no point in arguing feminism because it seems no one can agree what it is anyway. Say why you don't like her politically and then leave it alone and go do something else.

That's my view. I think Palin is great in some ways, but I don't agree with her politically and that is what is determinative. Not the other stuff. Though I still like her hair.

What I Love About Sarah Palin...

2008-09-12T11:36:00.005-05:00

is her hair. Never would I have guessed that a candidate for Vice President of the United States would wear her hair in a messy updo. No longer must I feel guilty for my hair when I go to the grocery store or the park. Now, if only I can get it to look as careless as she does. Unfortunately, I've only recently grown out my bangs and I'm not ready to cut them again. Besides, it's so political.

I found a couple of interesting links about her hair. One compares it to Audrey Hepburn. Another sees Sophia Loren. You know who I see? The woman from the Adam Ant Goody Two Shoes video (okay, the glasses have been updated, but otherwise, they are pretty similar).

Clip Show

2008-09-10T14:50:00.004-05:00

here's a shrug I knit last year. I don't think I've posted anything about it on this blog. I was so upset by this shrug last year. Knitting has led to much personal growth for me. Though I look a bit ratty wearing this stuff; I'm just trying to prepare a wardrobe for my upcoming eccentric old lady phase. I plan to be really weird.

Dr. Seamlove

2008-09-10T14:25:00.004-05:00

* or how I learned to stop worrying and love the mattress stitch

I finished the sleeves/body of my shrug with attached scarf and have started on the scarf. This feels a lot like knitting the shrug all over again because the shrug is basically the scarf with the ends seamed up to become sleeves.

I was dreading seaming the shrug. Partly because this was begun as a different project and I changed it after I had done 10 inches of knitting. I was worried the ribbing would look really weird when the seamed the sleeves. Also, I haven't done much seaming and what I have done was on simple stockinette and I don't believe I used the mattress stitch but took more of a Swedish Chef approach. Oh, yeah, and there was that unfortunate ribbing seaming incident with another shrug. Believe it or not, I learned from that and took it into account when I began this project - the original project. When I changed patterns mid-stream my whole attempt to avoid the same mistake looked rather foolish. But I laugh in the face of mistakes these days.

I read my books on the mattress seam, picked up my needle and gave it a try. The shrug was knit in 2 by 5 ribbing. I was actually able to keep the 2 by 5 look without making the seam look bulky. I was amazed. The sleeves do get a little wonky at the upper arm where I was like "I think this is going to get a little snug" so I added a couple of stitches per alternating row over 6 rows (6 stitches added). Again, I took a Swedish Chef approach. I didn't know what the heck I was doing. So maybe the pattern changes to more of a 2 x 6 or 7 ribbing at the seam, but that's not bad. And anyone looking that close to my underarms and counting stitches has some real problems. Sicko.

May I say that the mattress stitch is blowing my mind. It really acts as it's described, you sew a few stitches and then gently pull and then -whoop- it's closed up and you can't see a seam. It's supernatural.

I've got more work to do on this shrug. Not only do I need to knit the scarf and then attach it, I want to do something to the bottom of the back of the shrug. It needs something. I'm thinking that something will involve a crochet border of some kind.

And to think this project nearly caused me to bail on knitting. Far out.

Hooked on Crochet

2008-08-24T15:30:00.019-05:00

Wow, I haven't written in awhile, eh?

I have previously tried crochet, only to fail or lose interest. Well, I must have finally found a simple enough pattern for something worth crocheting and it all clicked. I made the Little Ditty Bag for my tape recorder (I use it to tape record my voice lessons. Yes, I am finally owning up to taking voice lessons. La la la la -- here that? It's on pitch and I had breath support for it, baby). Anyway, my poor little tape recorder was getting bumped around something fierce, so when I saw this little purse, which strikes me as too little to be much use to me, I thought it was just the thing. Did I mention it was easy? Very easy. Pretty much all single crochet with some increasing. I love it.

I've been pretty much trolling for simple crochet patterns and making stuff. Some are successes

others, less so

There's a weekend I won't get back. It didn't fit and I decided I liked the yarn too much for a hat that didn't fit.

what's wrong with the doll's hat? you ask. Let's just say that it was not supposed to be a doll's hat. And the back looks like Frankenhat.

Anyway, most of my on-line time has been spent on Ravelry.

Flower Hat - success

2008-05-19T07:48:00.008-05:00

Pattern: Flower Hat, modified. Yarn: Patons Melody, super bulky, acrylic. Needle size: 13

I figured I did not have enough yarn (85 yards) to complete the hat so I researched patterns for top down hats rather than attempting the gathered top in the pattern. I decided to go with a pattern I'd read for the Jamaica Pouch. Not a hat at all, but one member on Ravelry showed her daughter wearing the bag as a hat and I thought I'd try it. In the course of this research, I also came across a cast on for circular knitting that I thought I'd try. Can't say it worked out great but it wasn't a flop, either.

I followed the JP pattern for 6 rounds (42 stitches) and then did simple knitting until hat measured about 7" inches and then began ruffle instructions for flower hat. For the second increase in the ruffle, I decided to knit front and back of each stitch to increase, I found it to be less holey-looking. I did the bind off with a crochet hook because I didn't have enough yarn to bind off in the usual manner. I read about the crochet hook bind off in Stitch n' Bitch Nation, p. 113.

This is a perfect size for my younger daughter (5 1/2), too bad it was knit for my older daughter (8).

Flower Hat - failed

2008-05-19T07:00:00.000-05:00

Pattern: Flower Hat, modified. Yarn: Patons Melody, super bulky, acrylic. Needle size: 13

I figured this would fail because I was using the wrong sized yarn. I was bored with my current project and needed to do something. It's a hat, it's a small commitment. It's acrylic and leftover from a poncho I made. I was not afraid of having to frog this.

I started following the pattern. Casting on 60 made the hat way too big (even for me) and this was for a child. I also learned that I would run out of yarn and wouldn't be able to make the ruffle.

The hat is knit top down, so what you see as the brim is supposed to be the top. The holes are for a cord to be used to gather it together. See the pattern picture, it's really cute. I thought I could salvage the hat by turning it upside down and doing a simple finish for the crown. I figured I would weave a ribbon through the eyelet holes and make a bow. It would be lovely and help tighten up the large hat. Since this hat was for my daughter, I asked her whether she would like me to do that, or to rip it and make the Flower Hat with the ruffle. She went for the Flower hat, so you can read about that here.

My First Sweater

2008-04-07T07:16:00.008-05:00

I find myself pondering the question of why knit sweaters. You can buy perfect, machine-knit sweaters in a variety of styles, colors, and sizes. Why bother knitting one yourself? If you think I have an answer, you're wrong. The reason I knit this sweater is my mom de-stashed something like 12 balls of this yarn. I think the sweater took about 6. I wasn't sure what to do with it. I'm not a variegated yarn kind of gal, but I love turquoise so I gave it a shot. What did I have to lose? A whole bunch of free yarn. And time.

After doing extensive research for an appropriate pattern and reading all about yarn and knitting, I found a pattern that worked. I needed a simple stitch since the variegated yarn creates enough interest on it's own. No lace, no cables, just plain stockinette. The yarn is half cotton, half acrylic and I was worried about it stretching out from the weight of the cotton and it's inelastic nature (I don't know whether being half acrylic tempers this much, one would think it would, but I'm not experienced enough to know.) I found a pattern on the Drops site for a bolero jacket, perfect, it has room the stretch without swallowing me up. Plus, as I'm comfortably situated in my late 30s, I'd like to show off my waist as long as I have one.

This was a pretty easy knit. I've now accepted that in knitting (and perhaps in all things), I must be willing to rip back when I make a mistake. No more "damn the torpedos, full speed ahead" (my usual m.o.). Mistakes are little signs that something is wrong and it doesn't take all that long to fix. It's just demoralizing, but before you know it you've ripped back and are moving forward once again.

The knitty gritty (there is more on Ravelry):

Pattern: Drops Design Bolero with raglan sleeves

Needles: size 9, I use Denise Circulars

Yarn: Sirdar Spree Chunky - what's the weight, bulky? worsted? I don't know but I got gauge, which is how I found this pattern. Drops allows you to pattern search on gauge.

This was my first sweater and I've only been knitting 6 months, so I didn't bring a whole lot of information with me. It took me a few tries to understand the pattern. Based on the measurements in the pattern, I choose to make a size Large. After the first few rows, I realized it would be too big, so I ripped back and made a size Small. Even though I got gauge (and my knitting showed I continued to be dead on), this sweater was knitting out 2 inches larger than the measurements in the pattern. I don't know why, maybe it's the yarn I used, I did not use the recommended yarn. Who knows. When I finished, I felt the sweater was a little tight across the upper arms and back on the first wearing. On the second, it felt completely comfortable. Who knows what is going to happen to this thing with wear and washing.

Modifications

Sleeves: Since I have so much yarn and this sweater is intended for wearing in the cool early spring, I did not want short sleeves. Because of concern for the stretching of the yarn, I did not want long sleeves. I shot for 3/4 sleeves and that's pretty much what I got. Being a newbie, I wasn't quite sure about increasing and decreasing and didn't want to bother. I had fallen in love with some bell sleeves I saw in other patterns and dreamed of doing that. But I thought I should keep is simple. So I took the widest measurement of the sleeve (where the pattern joins it to the body) and knit that the full length of the sleeve. I'm happy with how it came out. It was a lot of knitting in the round, but it was easy and I used the two circular needle method of knitting small diameter tubes. Not that the sleeve was all that small, but small enough that using a singular circular would have been difficult, if not impossible. When I first joined the sleeves to the body, I needed to work with a second circular again as I approached the arm because it was so tight in that area. After a few rows, though, there was enough room to knit on just one circular.

Neckline/Buttonband: I ignored the pattern directions to hold the 5 stitches of button band on each side while knitting the rest of the sweater. I continued to knit the first and last 5 stitches in garter. It made the top of the sweater a little funky, but I've got no problem wearing a sweater that looks handknit and has imperfections in it. It strikes me as very human. When I came to the last rows of the sweater, I changed to garter stitch so that the back collar would match the waistbands and side. I tried decreasing within the first 5 stitches of each side every other row to taper it off -- I only did this for 5 rows. It looks okay, but I could have done better. But I was not about to attempt knitting out the collar seperately and attaching it. I'm pretty sure that would have looked worse.

Buttons: I made the yarn-over button-holes but though the bolero was a little snug to button in front. Plus, yarn-over button-holes are sloppy looking (so the knitting books tell me). I decided to chain stitch some ties from the yarn. I inserted one chain through the 2 button-holes on one side and then took the other chain and inserted that through 2 places to correspond. One each side, I tied the two ends together so I can't accidentally pull the chain out. However, neither tie is sewn in so I can remove them and replace them with ribbon or some other fixture. To close the bolero, I simply tie the ties in a bow -- it creates a double-bow look because each tie is doubled.

Product vs. Process Learning

2008-03-27T11:06:00.001-05:00

This is a link to a post I wrote on the Life Without School community blog.

One reason I love homeschooling is because the product aspect is removed in some regard. Even when there is an actual tangible product or project, doing it for the love of learning and not for a grade is a very different thing. So much of what I did for the first 20-odd years of my life was about getting someone else's approval. It's amazing to start doing things for no other reason than that you are intrigued by something.

Yet Another Attempt at Myers-Briggs

2008-03-19T08:01:00.002-05:00

Thanks to Hilaree, on whose blog I found the link!

Sounds Like I'm Mean

2008-03-07T17:58:00.001-05:00

What kind of yarn are you?

You are Shetland Wool. You are a traditional sort who can sometimes be a little on the harsh side. Though you look delicate you are tough as nails and prone to intricacies. Despite your acerbic ways you are widely respected and even revered.
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Thank You, I REALLY needed that!

2008-02-25T19:38:00.002-05:00

Maybe you've got to be a knitter or maybe just be in desperate need of comic relief after three trips to the ER in one month. I dunno, but this is hysterical! And this ...

The Rose that Saved the Shrug

2008-02-15T13:57:00.005-05:00

In my typical bipolar knitting way, I am actually liking my Circular shrug.

I knit a rose to put on it (completely ripping off gloriana's idea -- thanks!). I'm not thrilled with how the seams on the shrug turned out, but oh well. Live and learn. Also, the shrug is a bit bulky and short. I'm blocking it now, so maybe it will come out fitted and long -- I'm pulling it for all I'm worth.

The Urge to Hook

2008-02-15T13:49:00.004-05:00

blogging the lazy way -- cut out passages of emails to friends and post them.

So I turned to the hook -- it's probably just a passing fancy. I wanted to make Suzanne a hair scrunchie for the St. Patrick's day parade and thought I'd use the goddawful acrylic I bought to make myself a St. Patty's day spiral scarf (I'm so sick of spiral scarves. I was going to crochet this one, but then I went to the ER with hives and thought I'll just do mindless knitting while there and was able to start it and do about half of it. I'll crochet on the fun fur edging).

The scrunchie turned out okay, except I somehow twisted it -- but it's going to be twisted in her hair, so who cares? Got the pattern from Kids Can Do It Crocheting. When I get bold, I'll add the beads. Something very exciting about crocheting, all that twisting. And my knitting has helped me get a feel for working with yarn and identifying stitches. I think knitting will always be my first love, though. I don't really like the way crochet looks, especially not in clothes, which is what I like to make.

Though I may get crazy with the scrunchies for awhile.

Such a Beautiful Poem

2008-02-15T10:38:00.003-05:00

I just wanted to share a link to this beautiful poem, Desiderata by Max Ehrmann. I found an excerpt of it on an unschooler's profile page. It does read like a creed for unschoolers, homeschoolers, or anyone who is trying to make their way on their own terms.

Thing 2 Lost an Upper Tooth

2008-02-12T09:18:00.001-05:00

sort of creepy, huh? The best part was I got to pull it -- the top front tooth was much harder to get out than the bottom ones.

The Temptation to Frog

2008-02-11T17:13:00.000-05:00

So I've finished the shrug and just need to seam it. But I'm running into problems. I thought I was smart to anticipate that I'd want the 2x2 ribbing to line up for seaming, so I was sure to set it up so that 2 purls would end up next to 2 knits. But it doesn't work that way.

I was just now reading Donna Kooler's Encyclopedia of Knitting and she says to end one piece with 1 knit and it's seam-mate with 2 knit stitches, since you'll lose a stitch when seaming. Oooooooo, so that's why my seam looks so crappy, because I'm losing a stitch. So, it's just a seam, right? Only the seams on this shrug come across your bust, so they are front and center. Aaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!!

Kooler suggests one way of avoiding having to seam the ribbing is do a provisional cast on, knit the body and seam it and then remove the provisional cast on and pick up the stitches on a circular needle and knit the ribbing in the round (no seaming). Brilliant, but a little late for me. Though I am pondering ripping back the bottom ribbing and seeing if I can cut the initial ribbing to remove it (someone did that on ravelry with another garment, so it's possible). I guess I would cut the yarn in the last row of ribbing so I have enough yarn to weave in so the body doesn't unravel.

I could do that, but then I think, well, the body of the garment isn't all that great, so should I just frog the whole thing? I've made plenty of mistakes. I've made peace with the design on back, that doesn't bother me anymore. But, I only knit 14 1/2 inches for the body, most people did at least 18 and I now know why, it just doesn't look right shorter. I could rip back the last ribbing section, knit the body longer and re-do the ribbing, making sure I have a column of 1 knit to line up with 2 knits for better seaming, but that's a lot of work for something I don't really like. Even if it's perfect, I don't really like it. It's shapeless and sort of clumsy. I always wondered why everyone pins it in the middle. Well, it doesn't look good if it's not pinned and/or it feels like it will slide off the shoulders.

I've learned a lot making this - I'm not even sad to frog it because I got so much out of it. Or, maybe I'll wear it a little, since it's so cold and I can always frog it in the summer. Or maybe I should just block it, see what that does and just suck it up. The yarn wasn't that expensive and I'm sick of being stuck in a cycle of knitting and ripping. I re-did the left seam, so it no longer puckers like in the picture. I did some funky chain stitching and then seaming. Now I think the left seam looks better than the right, so maybe I'll re-do that seam, block it and be done.

Onward, I've got a Cherie Amour to ruin!

Adventures in Arithmetic

2008-02-08T11:14:00.000-05:00

This is a post I wrote for the community blog, Life Without School. It tells about our approach to math. I notice that one link in the post is dead, but I will update it here.

The excerpt from my post with the working link:

I also found a great article in Book Links, a publication by the American Library Association, that lists and summarizes a number of books that help preschoolers through elementary aged kids learn about math.

Shrug Update

2008-02-02T09:07:00.001-05:00

for all of you out there with baited breath for me to finish this thing, I feel I should tell you I don't think it's going to look like the mock-up I did in my earlier post. Working up the diagram, the knit stitches sort of frame the purls - but it doesn't look like this working down and I'm not sure how to fix it, or whether it can be fixed. I've been knitting and ripping, knitting and ripping and I'm tired of it, I'm just knitting through. It will be interesting to see how it turns out -- and I'm really glad it will be on my back!

Note: the safety pin marks where I stopped knitting up the pattern chart and started working down. You can see that the older yarn is in touch with it's angoraness, getting a little fuzzy, while the newer part has yet to fuzz.

I think I'm going to rip it back (yet again) to the point of reversal (the safety pin) and just knit it following the pattern. That will be fine, this reversal just didn't work out.

Avatar

2008-01-30T19:20:00.000-05:00

Learning from Testing

2008-01-30T11:17:00.006-05:00

This is a post I wrote for the community blog, Life Without School.

I love that homeschooling allows my children the opportunity to learn about testing without having testing overshadow actual learning.

Redemption Shrug

2008-01-30T08:31:00.000-05:00

(imagine hearing a version of Bob Marley's Redemption Song while reading this)

I've worked through the stages of grief with this shrug - this is how it went:

Step 1 - Denial. I thought it would simply take a number of rows before I could discern the vinnland pattern.

Step 2 - Anger. Why didn't I get any help? I looked in knitting instruction books for help and found nothing to tell me how to use the diagram properly. I can't do this by myself, as with so many others, hubris was my downfall.

Step 3 - Envy. I want it to look like kvp's shrug.

Step 4 - Depression. I made a mistake and it doesn't look right. I appreciate kitmf's comment that it was a design decision, but it wasn't. It was a mistake. I'm a failure and a very bad knitter. Lord only knows what I'm doing to my kids if I can't even knit a shrug properly.

Step 5 - Acceptance. This is MY shrug and it looks fine. I need to stop comparing myself to others and my hair is going to cover up half the back anyway.

And since I'm not a Buddhist, I can't stop at acceptance. No, I ascribe to the doctrine of the Christian Church, so there must be something more....

Step 6 - Redemption. This started out as a mistake, but I will own it. I will redeem the mistake and make it a design. Thus, I have decided to flip the chart. I've knit half of it going up, I'll knit the other half going down. There will be salvation in symmetry! I only wish it was a bit closer to Easter.

Why write this now, why not just do it and post the finished picture? Because if I flame out big time I want this to document the glimmer of hope, the spark of life I once had. Some will believe, others will demand proof (after all, I'm married to a man named Thomas).

P.S. Hi Tammi! I miss you!

The Shrug of My Torment

2008-01-29T11:01:00.000-05:00

I'm trying to determine whether I'm an idiot, but I'm not sure I'm smart enough to know.

Some time ago, my friend pointed out the Circular Shrug thread on Craftster. After obsessing over it, reading the posts, and looking at the pictures, I decided I wanted to make one. I ordered the yarn, the nicest yarn I had yet purchased since I often get my acrylic-blend yarns at Michael's. Well, I found a closeout on WEBS of a pretty pink in Cascade Cloud 9 - half angora, half wool. It's really nice. Unfortunately, I was not able to get to this project because I started my spiral scarf knitting binge for Christmas gifts.

After getting on Ravelry and rediscovering shrugs, and ordering yarn for a similar pattern, I looked for my Cloud 9 and thought I'd start that. Following the pattern directions, I dutifully knit a gauge swatch -- only I'm lazy and I only did a few rows, enough to get a close enough estimate so I could calculate how many stitches to cast on. Okay, done, I got my CO number and I happily knit 5 inches of 2x2 ribbing (a technique which I suffered to learn on another shrug I made). Piece of cake. Only when it's time for me to start the pattern stitch of mock rib, it occurs to me I have never done that stitch, which means I did my gauge swatch in stockinette (I didn't keep the swatch, I unraveled it and used it in the shrug. Oh, that's why you keep the swatch). BUT, you need to do your swatch in your pattern stitch or frogs will start falling from the sky. Well, maybe not that bad, but goodness knows what happens when you go off pattern and I had already done that with said earlier shrug.

The problem is I don't want to do boring old stockinette stitch for the body of the shrug. So I start searching Vogue Knitting's Stitchionary, Vol. 1 (on loan from the library) in an attempt to find something that looks interesting but not too far from st st. But, the stitches I find interesting and yet simple enough require a certain number of stitches, which I don't have. So I can't switch to those. Then I find kvp's shrug on Ravelry. The body of her shrug was mostly st st with an interesting design up the back. Perfect, I'll do that! She provided a link for the pattern. The only wrinkle is I've never knit from a diagram, I've always followed a written pattern (e.g. P2, K1, YO, P2.....), I've never used the grid. This indicates I'm more aural than visual (if you've ever studied learning styles).

The thing is, I'm not sure how to read the grid. I refer to the VK Stitchionary, since the Anticraft noted the vinnland pattern was adapted from a pattern in there. Looking at the VK stitch, which is written out, not on a grid, it instructs you to purl every other row, so you are only working the pattern on odd rows. Made sense to me. I tried to find instruction on how to read patterns or grids in my other knitting books but couldn't find anything that told me how to read the grid, they just explained stuff I knew about reading patterns, gauge, stitches and abbreviations, and needle size, etc. I also figured that if you use the pattern stitch for every row, you'd have to reverse knits and purls and it would all be so complicated.

So I start to knit, using the pattern on my knit side and purling the entire row in between. I'm digging the grid, it's really fun. Only my pattern looks longer and less intricate than kvp's and she has about 6 repeats of the pattern and there is no way I'm going to get that.

Dawn come slowly to Camp Marjorie. Turns out I couldn't find instruction on reading a grid because it's called a CHART (as noted on the Anticraft, and on the chart I printed out and have been referring to constantly. Oooh - balance tips in favor of an idiocy determination). The written out instructions on the Anticraft didn't trigger a correction in my mind because that's written for knitting in the round, not back and forth, like I'm doing. Turns out, Debbie Stoller has already explained how to read a chart simply in her book, Stitch n' Bitch, which I own! Only I couldn't find it because I didn't realize that the grid is actually a CHART. Reading a chart is different than I would have assumed. I was correct that you need to reverse the stitches, but you're also reading right to left for some rows and reading left to right for others. I feel fairly confident I would have really screwed up if I tried to read the chart the correct way.

Oh well, my knitting presents yet another opportunity for me to practice a sort of Buddhist acceptance. Only I'm a Christian and I'm looking for forgiveness and while it's similar, it's not the same thing. Part of me wants the redemption promised by Christ by ripping back and re-knitting. I cannot move forward from this sin in a state of grace because that would mean changing to the correct pattern, which would look really weird - so "go out and sin no more" doesn't work in this case. I'm stucking repeating my sin and I'm not sure how forgiveness works if you keep doing the same sin intentionally, and I'm not Catholic so I can't pull the Robert Hanssen of confessing it and then continuing (something tells me he twisted doctrine on that one, but it's not my doctrine, so how would I know?) Part of me wants to accept that what I'm doing, though different than my plan, is fine. And my hair is long and is going to cover half of the pattern anyway, and it's on my back, so it's not even like I'll be seeing it in the mirror.

Maybe I'll feel better if I stop showing everyone the picture of kvp's shrug and telling them that is what I'm doing.

The Knitting Journey - Ponchos

2008-01-26T15:51:00.000-05:00

This is a bit dated, but I need to have some posts to which to link Ravelry projects. I don't think you're supposed to use the comments area as a de facto blog.

So I started knitting at the urging of a good friend of mine (who will be moving to Turkey in a few days. Guess she just couldn't take me anymore). I had been taught the basic skills of knitting, purling, casting on, and binding off as a child, so I wasn't starting from scratch. I had tried knitting during my first pregnancy and quickly grew frustrated - I don't even remember what pattern I used or how I approached it all, but I definitely did not do any background research. I just had my needles, my yarn, the pattern, and hope. Not enough hope, though, and the growing baby inside me made it's own demands, so the project was quickly abandoned. I remember being frustrated because I couldn't count the stitches when I looked at a row of knitting (it didn't occur to me the little loops on the needle are what you count! Pregnancy brain, maybe).

This time, I used the training wheels of a kit from HearthSong for a kid's poncho. I figured using a kit designed for kids would be good for a beginner. So I had big needles, big yarn, and instructions, all in a convenient kit -- no running to the store looking for this or that. I made one and it worked out well. This kit was easy to use, the bulky yarn and big needles mean it knits up quickly and knitting for my 5 and 7 year old daughters was satisfying, they were thrilled, they never noticed the little mistakes. Granted, they don't exactly take care of the ponchos, but that's the flip side of them not demanding perfection. The poncho is your basic, two rectangles seamed together. The pattern used the eyelet stitch for each rectangle. It was more interesting to do than simply knitting and purling, but it was not difficult for a beginner like me. The varied color yarn and interesting stitch kept me from getting bored. The pattern called for fringing around the bottom, but I skipped that, the kids never missed it. I made a second one for my other daughter.

Then, since I was the one who really wanted a poncho, I bought yarn and made one for myself using the same pattern. I was disappointed with it at first until my friend happy-talked me into how great it was and how part of the glory of the thing was I made it myself. I really like it now. But, alas, a poncho is fairly limited. You can really only wear it in the appropriate weather, it's not comfortable to wear it under a coat in the winter. Also, a poncho flops forward when you lean over, so it's often getting in the way (at least if you're trying to cook dinner).

Sometime during all this knitting, I started checking out knitting books from the library. I started out looking at pattern books because that's what interested me - I would mostly just look at the pictures. After awhile, I actually started reading the patterns. Later, I checked out instructional books. I like to look at books written for kids first, because it eases me into the subject. Then I started looking at all kinds of knitting books. I really like the Stitch n' Bitch series because Debbie Stoller has such a laid-back, sarcastic style - I found it very readable, but also very instructive. I enjoy cross-referencing several books - sometimes people explain things in different ways and it takes a few tries to find the one you can understand. The diagrams used in each book vary, as well, and some are easier for me to understand. Sometimes, you just need to put the books down and gain experience knitting to understand what the books are trying to teach you. Yes, you may have guessed I see a lot of analogies between homeschooling and knitting - or maybe it's just about learning generally. You can give someone instruction until you are blue in the face, but if they don't understand it, they don't understand it and you need to be able to give it a rest. Eventually, they will be ready for the information or instruction and they will understand it.

The web has lots of wonderful sites with knitting patterns and with knitting instruction. Knitting help dot com is wonderful, it has lots of short videos that demonstrate various techinques.

What's a Yarn Tramp To Do?

2008-01-16T16:28:00.000-05:00

A yarn tramp is the opposite of a yarn snob -- those who distain mass-produced, largely synthetic yarns that can be bought at major craft store chains like Michael's and A.C. Moore. I know what I am, I'm a yarn tramp, I want my yarn cheap and easy and on demand. I have about three different Michael's stores near me and I tend to frequent them once or twice a week. A.C. Moore is a little tougher for me to get to and I've only been there once, but the choice was staggering (and the sales can be fabulous -- Paton's Divine for something like $2 a skein, only Lavender Mist was left but that didn't stop me from buying 2 skeins and I don't wear lavender).

Well, I will probably never be a yarn snob, but as my knitting improves, I feel that I deserve better fiber than acrylic. So I've been dipping my toe into Knit Picks and WEBS. My first purchases were a few months ago and included an Alpaca blend yarn for my mom's Christmas gift, a spiral scarf. I thought it was a real luxury that I was getting it for her and not picking up some blend at Michael's. Well, I didn't like knitting with it and wasn't too thrilled about the product - it was scratchy and when I washed it, well, it smelled like a wet Alpaca was in my house. Next to the acrylic blend scarf I knit my friend, which didn't smell and has a wonderful tuft and feel, I felt a bit cheated.

I also bought some Cascade Cloud 9 from the sale bin and it's niiiiiiicccee. It's half merino wool and half angora and it feels like a cloud. I had put it in with my stash for a few months while I worked in the salt mines of knitting spiral scarves for those who are dearest to me and sort of forgot about it. Even forgot why I had bought it. Well, perusing Ravelry reminded me that I had bought it for this awesome circular shrug I saw on Craftster (thanks to my friend and knitting mentor, Angi). I haven't been working with it very long, but it is a pleasure.

So, as I plan future projects, I thought I'd give the on-line yarn stores another crack and buy some good stuff. For another circular shrug, I bought some Peruvian Highland Wool from Knit Picks -- yes, I did this before I realized that I had previously bought bright pink Cloud 9 for almost the same pattern. Hopefully, as I use the notebook feature in Ravelry, this won't happen again.

Here's the sad part of the story. I ordered this luscious yarn on-line and had to go by the print catalog photo and the on-line photo. "Mauve" had potential because I love mauve, but the print catalog photo struck me as more of a warm-toned rose than a cool-toned mauve. The on-line picture showed me what I wanted to see, a beautiful pink with blue undertones. The price seemed like what I'd pay at Michael's for yarn that wasn't as nice. So I bought 6 skeins. After waiting a week -- the downside of ordering yarn -- I find I don't really like the color and am considering returning it (I hate to return mail order, paying shipping twice and getting nothing for my effort hurts). But it feels so good and the color is growing on me. And the rosiness of it makes it quite different from the bright pink of the Cloud 9 and..... Maybe I'll keep it. Though I don't think I can do two circular shrugs -- but finding another project is not hard.

What's that you ask? Why don't I just buy good yarn at the local yarn store? I have two young daughters who seem especially tactile and I cannot enjoy looking at yarn when I'm worried the saleswoman is shooting me daggers and my kids are tangling expensive yarns -- yarn stores are always so small and cramped. At Michael's there is no one there to stare and no one really cares if my kids have their hands in the acrylic and they often are running up and down the aisles looking at more interesting craft supplies than yarn.

Oh, and another reason I can never slide into yarn snobbery is the aforementioned Craftster bolero. The long discussion thread includes someone talking about using cheap acrylic yarn to make the pattern as a way to see if it was something they really wanted to make. She noted that it was so easy to machine wash the garment and it came out so soft and stretchy that she was humbled. So remember, acrylic is not the enemy, you just don't need to make it your boyfriend.

School System More Powerful Than Police

2008-01-16T07:20:00.000-05:00

Another day, another article in The Washington Post. This one continues to detail the involvement of five city agencies with the mother who killed her children sometime after pulling them out of school to "homeschool" them. The tragedy is that we all know that the school system could have saved these children by regulating homeschooling even when child welfare, social services, and the police failed. In Washington, D.C., which we all know has efficiently run agencies where tragedies like this never occur. Sorry, got distracted by a leprechaun and it's not even March. Let's turn back to the article and try to tone down the sarcasm.

Five agencies had contact with the family. Six child welfare workers have been fired for failing to respond to concerns about the children dating from April 2006, the article says. Clearly, D.C. has some problems. The article doesn't list the agencies, but I'm wondering if law enforcement is once since the article later mentions that during a visit to the home, the mom was "very difficult" with police and a social worker (just laying a foundation for my post title).

The part of the article that I love is the report of the D.C. Council meeting, which picked apart the case to determine whether this was a rare tragic occurrance, or whether it's systemic. During their analysis, council members asked why school truancy and homeschooling policies failed to follow up on these kids. From what I can see, the mom pulled the kids out of school in March 2007 and may have told someone she was homeschooling, but at least one of the schools claims it didn't know why. Six weeks later social services sends a letter to one of the school's offices asking for more information. Public school officials cannot confirm receipt of this letter.

So many mistakes by so many people. But one of the questions the Council is asking is the principal of one of the schools, who received "verbal withdrawl" from the mom when pulling the kids from school, was why he didn't ask about the mom's level of education and fitness to educate her daughters. Well, that would have saved the kids, wouldn't it have? Maybe they should have considered her mental illness, her drug use, her failure to follow-up on paternity suits that she brought -- no, her educational level and ability to homeschool her kids would have been the question to snap people to attention and to help these kids.

Okay, I'm not angry anymore, just sad. Come on, though, the school could have helped these kids when FIVE other agencies failed? Please.

Haiku for a Yarn Winder

2008-01-15T16:52:00.000-05:00

I watch it wind yarn

spinning non-spherical balls

it makes me happy

The Shallow Learning Curve of Knitting

2008-01-14T20:40:00.000-05:00

wow, I've learned a lot since I first cast on for one of the kids' ponchos back in September. I can actually understand how the stitches are supposed to look and identify mistakes and how to fix them (the best use of a crochet hook I've had so far).

Anyway, a quick chronology of my knitting thus far: I began with ponchos for the kids. Then I did one for me. I moved into spiral scarves. I had a couple failures before successes but I learned that a failure need not remain so. You can fix mistakes with creativity. If your spiral scarf is ridiculously long, simply seam it up the middle. It wasn't what you were expecting, but the result is nice. A parable for life, don't you think?

I'm currently in my shrug phase. I knit a mohair one that really didn't go the way it should. I changed the pattern and in my ignorance, made a lot of mistakes so that it just turned out funky. When I get to it, I'll wash it and block it (after first weaving in those threads I still haven't gotten to), then we'll see what we've got. I knit a flower to pin somewhere to cover some yarn sin.

Now, what now? I'm trying another shrug. I'm very interested in knitting flowers and I took an odd cupcake tangent whereby I acquired patterns and yarn and have now lost interest.

Oh, and I was thinking I'd try my hand at cables. Sometimes they intrigue me, sometimes I could care less.

What is wrong with The New York Times?

2008-01-13T18:45:00.001-05:00

What kind of sensationalistic crap are they writing? Did you see the article about that horrible multiple homicide in Washington, D.C.? The mom had pulled her kids out of school at some point and claimed to be homeschooling them. As a result, the NYT used the headline Lack of Supervision Noted in Deaths of Home-Schooled. Terrible, tragic, awful -- but she wasn't a homeschooler. She was a woman who took advantage of the law and pulled her kids out of school and said she was homeschooling.

If you read The Washington Post, the hometown paper for this incident, you'll find out the woman had a long history of troubles. Here's their headline - Making of a Tragedy: The Single Mother's World Included Drugs, Homelessness And Paternity Suits. Her Children Paid the Price. This was not a woman who was reading about education, going to homeschool conferences, perusing websites and chatlists and catalogs to figure out what curriculum to use. This was a woman who was falling apart. One wonders why the school-system and home education are to blame when welfare and social services failed this woman. Heck her food stamps were cancelled because she failed to update her information. Why not go after that? No, who cares if they eat, let's wait until she snaps and blame it on homeschooling.

The Post article barely mentions homeschooling. It only does so in the chronology of the mom's very sad life. It's obvious she is sick and has had bad luck and lots of troubles and it sounds like homeschooling was one of the last things she did. She certainly was not a 'homeschooler' gone bad but a very troubled woman who pulled her kids out of school.

I think it's outrageous that the Times would put it into the headline that these kids were homeschooled (make that "home-schooled"). So many of these abuse stories aren't about homeschooling, this one seems like it really has very little to do with homeschooling and far more to do with poverty and mental illness and instability in the family.

And what is Mitchell Stevens babbling about in his quote in the Times? He is paraphrased as saying that "school officials, who are required by law to report suspicion of child abuse, were society’s best watchdogs of how parents treat children." Yes, and we all know there are no abused kids going to school who aren't getting noticed and helped. Please. Mitchell, shame on you, you should know better. But hey, it's nice to see your name in the Times.

What gives, is the NYT pissed off about Huckabee? That's not our fault. Really.

Addicted to Ravelry

2008-01-07T08:39:00.000-05:00

I know that in trying to build a readership for your blog, you should stick to one subject. Well, I gave up building a readership a long time ago - this is a diary and I'm a messy person. For those interested in my homeschooling thoughts, you'd do best to check out Life Without School. I write on a regular basis there and it sort of taps me out as far as wanting to write about homeschooling.

A few months ago, at the urging of my good friend and fellow homeschooling hottie, I decided to try my hand at knitting. It clicked, it stuck, and now I'm crazed. Knitting is great for me, I feel creative, I feel productive, I feel peaceful. And it's the perfect hobby for an unschooler like me who basically sits around watching the kids learn and tries to keep up with their questions and interests. I knit at playdates, I knit at parkdays, I knit at Brownie meetings, I knit while the kids watch a video, I knit while they read and play and learn and live. I knit, knit, knit.

I started out with a kit from HearthSong designed for kids. That worked out so well that I adapted it to an adult size for me. Then began my obsession with spiral scarves, an unfortunate affair with the Lion Brand website's free patterns, perusal of knitting books, and (thanks to the GFFHH mentioned above) visits to Craftster.

Craftster tipped me off to Ravelry, which is invitation only at this point because it's so new, but will go public sometime soon. Ravelry is too awesome for words and I will have to write more about it later as my spare time this morning has already been used.

My Educational Philosophy - Get a Life

2007-12-29T11:20:00.001-05:00

This is a post I wrote for the community blog, Life Without School.

"Get a life" was a comment I received fairly recently on my blog, unclimber....For a moment, I felt a bit upset to get what seemed to be only a mean-spirited comment. Then I realized it was an opportunity for reflection....

The irony is that in ruminating on "get a life", I realized that it sums up my educational philosophy.

Well Said!

2007-12-24T11:42:00.000-05:00

Not all homeschoolers are politically conservative and we aren't too fond of being painted that way! Here's a response to an article about the political power of homeschoolers who come together for a common goal -- just don't think all homeschoolers think alike!

The Out of Sync Mom

2007-09-14T13:31:00.000-05:00

We just can't get it together today. My ambitious plan to go to Trader Joe's is being thwarted by my children getting intensely involved with an activity, then I get involved in my own thing when they are ready to go, so they get involved in something else, so I continue my activity, and so on and so on.

One activity I tried was to make a crochet flower from a book I have. I was always wondering what makes one person a knitter and another a crocheter. A year ago, I taught myself to crochet because I thought I'd be a crocheter. I'm not sure why I thought that, I guess I was daunted by two needles -- one hook seems so much simpler and harkens back to a time when people held the door open for old ladies. Well, I crocheted a square and couldn't figure out what I wanted to make, so I gave up. Now, I have identified a need. I need ponchos. Well, I got the knitting poncho kit and knitting I am. But I thought a crochet flower would make a lovely embellishment and it's a small project that I can try instead of making some meaningless square just to practice my stitches.

I reported my day to my yarn friend, and this is what I said:

We've just been hanging out and planning to go to Trader Joe's. But then I realized Suzanne has her hand-knit poncho on and I wondered why Gabrielle wasn't wearing hers. Then I realized because I hadn't yet sewn the pieces together. So I did that, meanwhile, the girls started dancing to one of the Putumayo CDs. Then they brought out Barbies and were playing some bizarre game that sounded like it must have involved the Marquis de Sade. It was sort of disturbing. As they were playing, I finished the poncho, but not wanting to disturb their creative play since they were really engaged in it, I decided to try the crochet flowers I read about in a book [I had been using the crochet hook to weave in the stray threads on the poncho, so I figured I'd just go with it]. So I did a really wonky crochet flower because I got confused and was single crocheting where I was supposed to slip stitch and I was just getting jiggy with the yarn [this is why I may be a natural knitter -- keeping the stitches on the needles is much more orderly and is easier for me to track what I'm doing, crocheting is just like "what the hell is going on here" chaos for me. I've got one hook, one loop and all this yarn...] Anyway, the flower was supposed to have 8 petals but only has 5 -- but Suzanne thinks its beautiful and attached it to her poncho and now Gabrielle wants one.

So, will we get to Trader Joe's? Tune in next time when Suzanne says "but Gabrielle's flower has more petals on it than mine!"

It was through this email that I feel I have come to an understanding of the crochet personality vs. the knit personality. Last year I thought I'd be a crocheter, but I think I'm actually a knitter. I gotta see the stitches on my needle, man. I'm lost without it. But I accept that about myself.

Knit not Sew

2007-09-14T11:21:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I still haven't threaded the sewing machine that a friend so graciously gave to me. I still want to learn to sew, but this same friend was also trying to get me hooked on knitting and she has succeeded in that respect.

I learned how to knit when I was a child and tried briefly to take it up before my first was born. I decided to try again with a kit designed for kids. Hey, if it can teach kids to learn, why not me? The yarn was thick, the needles were big, it knit up quickly. I have knit two of them, one for each daughter and have started a poncho for myself. My friend also gave me the link to knitting help, which has videos of knitting and is very helpful to me when I get confused.

Other than the frustration of trying to learn to throw the yarn more quickly and pondering whether I should go "continental" rather than "English", I am finding knitting to be meditative and an opportunity for personal growth. I can be perfectionistic, but I can also be a slob (you'd have to see how I keep house). I was relentlessly counting my stitches after every row (well, with the adult poncho, I am actually counting mid-row using my handy-dandy stitch markers. Hey, it's easier to fix a mistake if you can identify where it happened).

I am now working with "eyelash" yarn that was on sale at Michael's. This is like the spiritual retreat of my knitting. I am often off count because it's hard to see the stitches clearly and I'm always picking up an extra stitch or not fully dropping one as I knit. Very frustrating. But, the yarn knits up very fluffy, so instead of being perfectionistic and trying to fix the stitch immediately by undoing and redoing it (or going back and ripping out the stitch), I simply leave it and note where the mistake occurred. On the next row, I just knit the extra stitch with another and away it goes. The fluffiness of the yarn makes the mistake impossible to see. I'm even thinking of renaming the "eyelash" yarn "Jesus yarn" because it's so forgiving. But is that too irreverent?

So the moral of this story is that with eyelash yarn, you need not go back and fix every mistake, you can move forward and fix it as you go. Or should I leave the mistake where it is and just live with it? I tried doing that with a broken kitchen drawer, but my mother-in-law fixed it when I wasn't home. So much for Zen.

The Socialization Fear and Homeschooling

2007-09-14T11:10:00.000-05:00

A nice article about one homeschooler's view of socialization.

My favorite -- the author recounts a story of being scolded for talking in class and being told "we are not here to socialize." She then wonders, "If schools weren't made for socializing, then why on earth would anyone assume that homeschoolers were missing out?"

Why is "what about socialization" often one of the first questions we homeschoolers hear? Just think about it for two seconds and a whole slew of answers come:

-- why would you want your child "socialized" with or by other school children? Is anyone laboring under the illusion that much of school interactions are polite and courteous?

-- is socialization one adult per 30 kids, telling them what to do? How is this like real life?

-- how many quiet or shy children really wish they had been pushed at age 5 or 6 or 7, to interact with other kids their same age? See question 1.

Oh well, to each, his own. I, for one, am glad that my second-grader does not respond to my requests with "whatever." I am glad my second-grader doesn't ask me if I'm going to talk about "s-e-x" when I ask for a few minutes to chat with my friend alone.

I've got a post coming up in a few weeks on Life Without School that discusses my thoughts on socializing vs. civilizing. Stay tuned!

BECAUSE I SAID SO: I Resign

2007-08-23T07:45:00.000-05:00

BECAUSE I SAID SO: I Resign

Hmmmm....this must be a common theme for moms, I wrote in a similar vein a few years ago.

Funny Grocery Shopping Story

2007-08-23T07:37:00.001-05:00

What happens with a mom inadvertantly buys an item which her children have snuck into the grocery cart? She takes her revenge on ebay, makes a few times over the money she spent, and publicizes her blog! Hysterically! A friend of mine shared the ebay link, which also includes the link to her blog.

Ain't motherhood grand?

Sew What?

2007-08-16T09:48:00.002-05:00

So the Freecycle machine did not work out. I read the repair book, it was still beyond me how to fix the machine, which was getting the thread tangled and caught in the bobbin casing. I decided to send it back out into the Freecycle-o-sphere. However, I posted an honest offer, detailing the shape it's in and the inability to procure a manual. I got a taker and it's out of my house. Phew!

Meanwhile, my friend who is trying to draw me into her web of crafting has not given up on me and gave me her old machine! (Thank you!) She scoffed at the idea of an instruction manual, but the machine is only a few years old and I was able to get the manual off the manufacturer's website (bonus because I thought I'd have to shell out $15 to buy one).

Of course, there is always an obstacle and right now, it's that I don't have a full-size spool of thread. The Freecycle machine came with one and I left it on there. So someday, I will get to a craft store or a fabric store and get some thread. I will buy good quality thread, having learned from a sewing machine book that people should not cheap out on thread (the chapter was titled something like "People get cheap in the weirdest places"). The implication being that they have already spent perhaps hundreds of dollars on the machine.

Meanwhile, I look at the sewing porn and ponder all the wonderful projects I could undertake. This has resulted in a number of spirited e-mails among other friends who have experience sewing and own machines. Perhaps it sounds too stereotypical, homeschoolers who sew their own clothes, but you've got to see some of the projects we're considering. Corset necktie belts, anyone?

Once again, option paralysis sets in and I have no idea what to make. I am thinking I might stitch a simple cover for the sewing machine. Another tidbit I picked up from the sewing books, never cover your machine in plastic, it makes the machine "sweat." That and use crocous cloth (available at your local hardware store) to gently buff out any 'burrs' on your machine needle or plate.

Yup, once again I have acquired a whole lot of knowledge that doesn't enable me to do anything.

Sew...

2007-08-09T06:11:00.000-05:00

wow, it's dusty around here. This blog seems almost abandoned. Or is it merely dormant while homeschooling takes over? Maybe it's just that I've found other ways to ignore my kids.

Anyway, I recently acquired a sewing machine from my local Freecycle list. Whether it works or not is a matter of debate. The offeror said it works and from the standpoint of plugging it in and pushing the pedal, the gears do operate. However, the thread gets tangled in the machine. So, I wouldn't call the thing operational. Maybe it's a simple fix. Unfortunately, the free machine did not come with a manual, so I'm posting here in case someone has a lead for me. The label says "Montgomery Ward." It's model UHT J 1984.

I headed to the library when I first acquired the machine to get all kinds of 'how to sew' books. Now, I am requesting all kinds of "how to fix sewing machine" books. Both of them.

I've been visiting the websites mentioned in the "how to sew" books because they uniformly tell me the most important piece of equipment is the instruction manual. Turns out, I've got a 'rare' machine that's not listed on the websites. But some get close.

Anyway, I'm having fun, picturing myself as a tinkerer. I do like to play with machines and might have made a good engineer, but who wants to take all that math? Maybe I would have been a good mechanic, they aren't required to take calculus.

Why do I want to start sewing on a machine? One of my friends made an adorable dress for her child that she found on this site and I thought it might be fun to become 'crafty.' So far, my path is not leading to 'crafty' but to machine repair work. Who knows.

Thats Why I Unschool

2007-04-25T07:34:00.000-05:00

-- no guarantee my kids won't hate me anyway, but they'll have to find a different reason.

Why We Hate Our Parents
Western parents feel it is their job to make their children into who they should be rather than relate to who they already are.
By Mark Epstein, M.D.

I was not unschooled myself and I don't hate my parents. They always accepted me and encouraged me, but never made me feel like I should be anyone else.

Thanks Mom and Dad.

How Did I Miss This Story?

2007-02-27T18:30:00.000-05:00

Must have been hibernating -- I live for this stuff. More than a decade ago, I headed off to law school with dreams of becoming a sex crimes prosecutor. How I ended up as a homeschooling mom is a long, sad story (with a happy ending, because I am, after all, a homeschooling mom).

Anyway -- wow, what an interesting story. A brief summary for those not interested in reading it -- a woman was drugged and raped at a fraternity in 1984. She received an apology in the mail from the perp as part of his 12 step program. Long story short, she has reason to believe he's not coming completely clean (she suspects it was a gang rape or at least it was spectator sport and he's pretty dismissive on the point). His apology is what we like to call "an admission" and she forwards it to the appropriate police department. He is prosecuted and takes a plea agreement. Two years. Looks like he got off a bit lightly because the prosecutor is looking in it being a gang-rape. Hope that means they'll find the others. I say subpeona everyone in the fraternity that year -- come on, someone put something in that drink, at least another frat boy shoved her back at the perp when she was screaming and trying to get away. There were more who at least knew what was going on and I'm guessing this wasn't an isolated incident.

The article was interesting because it mentions that the victim has been contacted by "Christians" criticizing her for "pressing charges" and admonishing her to forgive. One thing I was taught at the prosecutor's office where I worked was that the victim doesn't "press charges" the charges are the State's the victim is a witness. Sure, the victim can make things hard for the State and refuse to cooperate, but its not the victim's case. Of course, I think this victim should explore her civil remedies, in which case she would be pursuing him in what some might call an "unforgiving, unChristian" way. Well, good for them. Me, I'm a harpy.

Anyway, this leads me to all recriminations of Christians in the Episcopal church these days. To recap, some are annoyed over the consecration of a gay bishop in New England ("unbiblical and all that." Can't help but wonder why these people don't go Catholic, didn't the Anglican church start off by kicking out church doctrine of the day -- no divorce and all that? So why should anyone be surprised that the Episcopal Church is continuing the trend?).

The non-gay bishop of Virginia voted in support of the prospective consecration of the gay bishop (for various reasons) and I guess that was the 'green light' for some conservative parishes to try to take the money and run. Only they aren't running, its a land grab. They are incensed about there being a homosexual bishop, don't mind the "adultery" issue of many of their twice-married priests and bishops (the Bible goes on about divorce and remarriage, not just homosexuality). Now, these parishes are attempting to separate from the diocese while also kicking out any members who are not hate-filled homophobes (am I editorializing?). Lots of pain and gnashing of teeth. And we're supposed to fear hell? Seems like a lot of people are already there. And this is church? Where we're supposed to find God? Supposed to follow Jesus' teachings? Let he who is not vindictive cast the first stone. Ridiculous -- the defectors expect those loyal to the diocese to leave and call them vindictive if they want to stay. Don't they realize that they could be called vindictive because if they don't like church policy, shouldn't they be the ones to leave? What are they doing in an Episcopal church to begin with is a question I've been wondering. There are plenty of conservative churches and denominations out there. Its all about money, certainly not about God and clearly less about Jesus.

Okay -- where's that rock? I'd like to crawl back under it.

Misogyny in Candyland

2006-11-17T09:13:00.000-05:00

This has bothered me for awhile. We are the happy owners of two versions of Candyland and a while ago I noticed a discrepancy between the versions. In the first version we received, there were characters Princess Lolly and Queen Frostine, in addition to King Kandy, Lord Licorice, the Professor and Mary-Ann...whatever.

Well, in the newer version we received, there have been strange political changes. Lolly has been stripped of her princessness and Queen Frostine has been demoted to Princess. So whats the deal? She was one married to King Kandy and now is his daughter? What kind of sick-reversed-Oedipal-twist is that? Maybe its so the line "hey, little girl, want some candy?" works better.

I must admit, I haven't noticed any change in the men. And Grandma Nutt looks goofy as always. So whats the deal? Women are only young and nubile or old and senile, but never equal in power to men?

I think Chess is a better game for my girls. While the King is the most important player, the Queen is the most powerful.

I thought Barbie was bad -

2006-10-29T08:43:00.000-05:00

- and I've really got nothing against Barbie other than recognizing that my penchant for wearing tight clothes and my hair long and blonde is directly attributable to her.

I saw this link on a homeschooling list I read. It shows a model's evolution from being a real flesh-and-blood woman to being a billboard picture. The hair and make-up was a no brainer and I knew about the miracles of air-brushing. Years ago, I saw Jenny McCarthy on the Rosie show and she was drawing in stretch marks and pimples that had been air-brushed out of a poster for her. She ended up autographing it for Rosie. It was awesome. Anyway, I didn't realize that the beauty propagandists of today actually restructure the face, lengthen the neck, make the eyes bigger.

Guess we can all look like Disney princesses. Yay.

Shifting Paradigms Through Books

2006-10-15T11:01:00.007-05:00

this is an article I wrote for the community blog, Life Without School.

Because there are so many books about school or set in school, I wanted to share books with my daughter that showed other ways people learn and have learned over the years. School has been the norm for a long time, but it hasn't always been that way and there are others even today who choose a different way to educate. Some of the books we've enjoyed are listed [in this post].

Feminine Angst?

2006-10-03T10:20:00.000-05:00

Do you have that embarrassing "not so nice" feeling about men given recent headlines despite the fact that the men you've chosen to surround yourself with are wonderful, kind, humane, and supportive?

Nothing will make you feel more "fresh" than viewing one or all of the following movies:

Kill Bill, Vol, 2 has the most cathartic message and hones in on the male villians a bit more than Vol. 1. However, you'll need Vol. 1 in order to fully understand the story; Vol. 1 has its moments, like what happens to the orderly who pimps the coma patients at the hospital.

Dogville -- you'll have to be patient with this one, but if you're looking for catharsis, this will deliver.

Hard Candy -- "Was I born a cute vindictive little bitch or... did society make me that way? I go back and forth on that... "

Angry at Life? Angry at God?

2006-10-03T07:36:00.000-05:00

Thats what the news says. Not buying it, try "angry at women." Its sick enough to go out and kill people, still sicker to drop your kids off at a school bus stop and go to another school and kill other people's kids -- but to release the boys and kill the girls execution style? This guy wasn't angry at life -- he could have killed the life he helped create instead of putting it on a bus. His anger at God was strangely targetted at girls -- who really don't seem to play much of a part in the major monotheistic religions.

Its disturbing enough that there have been school shootings -- worse that there have been several in the past week. But I'd love to read about the particularly misogynistic strain of killers who pick off the girls (Linda Hirshman, this means you, I know you're not busy at home taking care of your kids so you probably have the time to write up something).

Sure makes the concern that institutional schooling is feminizing our boys seem overblown when some of these schools are death-traps for our girls.

New Class for Homeschoolers

2006-08-05T10:26:00.000-05:00

After reading an article in The Washington Post Magazine about the efforts required to get your child into preschool and reading the class listings in my county's recreation guide, I've come to the conclusion once again that its all about money and prestige, it has little to do with what is best for the child (other than assuming if everyone else is doing it, it must be best for the child). Really, preschool, it seems, is necessary because who can go to the trouble of making playdates?

Throw into the mix all the Back to School advertisements focusing on 'fashion-musts' for the institution-bound and I'm inspired to provide what has been lacking for homeschoolers for too long.

Plans are in the works for a new Social Trauma for Homeschoolers class. Topics addressed will include: Negative Body Image; Owning Your "Loser" Status for those who have been placed in the lower tracks; and Its Not Who You Are, Its Who You Date (And What You Wear). There will be a special "Back to School" night so that parents can be take part in the social trauma as well. There will even be a silent auction because nothing says status like showing how much you're willing to pay for an item you don't need or want.

The classes for the kids will begin with putting large groups of children on buses and ostracize and torment many of them. Those not tormented will be deemed 'popular' and they will have to conform to peer expectations or face ostracism. Just like in the 'real world', in Social Trauma, even the winners are losers. We will move on to a simulated cafeteria environment in which snubs and mockery rule -- fear of being different will be the focus of additional exercises. At the end of the year, we will have a Prom, for which we will prepare the entire year, focusing on fashion, dating, and how to secure a hotel room for teenage drinking and sex. Learning will be done at home, as it usually is.

I enjoyed school, the work is easy if you're aural/visual and quick to grasp the lessons and there is a lot of drama to keep you from getting bored. I really did learn more at home, though.

Competition Makes Us Sick

2006-08-01T06:49:00.001-05:00

I've been saying this for a long time and I just saw an article in the Washington Post, Sick of Expectations by Sandra Boodman, which says the same thing. Oh, how I love myself.

Boodman is reviewing a book, The Price of Privilege by Madeline Levine.

...Levine says that over-involved parents who pressure their children to be stars -- in school, on athletic fields, among their peers -- have created a generation that is "extremely unhappy, disconnected and passive." Unabashedly materialistic and disinterested in the wider world, they are both bored and "often boring," she writes. A large number suffer from depression, anxiety and substance abuse.

I totally buy the pushy parent part -- I've seen plenty of discussions about this on blogs and have addressed the topic in mine. The results on the children are not surprising, actually, they were predictable.

The article continues with excerpts of a Q&A with Levine, who says:

I do think the parental over-involvement and level of anxiety are new. A friend showed me the Yale alumni bulletin and said they used to write about who was appointed to the Cabinet or started a company or became head of a hospital. Now, it's whose kid made the select soccer team.

Someone should tip off Linda Hirshman that she can make a case that those elite women who have let her down to stay home with the kids are actually ruining them, so these women might as well go make lots of money and ostensibly help the women's movement.

In the article, Levine points out that the parents are unhappy and that they spend their time trying to perfect their children. I cannot help but wonder why the parents don't put that time into perfecting themselves and leave the kids alone (did someone turn on Pink Floyd's The Wall? I once wrote on this blog "hey, parents, leave those kids alone" but I think I edited it out. Sometimes I can be extreme.)

From the article:

Kids aren't having the experiences that are mandatory for healthy child development -- and that's a period of time to be left alone, to figure out who you are, to experiment with different things, to fail, and to develop a repertoire of responses to challenge. They have no interior life. It's all about performance -- and performance is not real learning.

Others have said similar things -- I wrote about David Elkind in one of my posts, saying:

his point is not that kids should be sitting around 'playing' all day (the horror!), its that overcompetitive parents may actually be harming their kids when they pressure and overschedule them and don't leave them time to play, think, and dream.

I once read an article about a young boy who was stressed out because everywhere he went, people told him what to do -- at school, at extracurricular activities, even at Sunday school. He was less than a double-digit age and he was stressed because he had no breathing room.

Back to parental unhappiness, Levine goes on to talk about the lack of community support these days.

Now, people wouldn't think of going next door for a cup of coffee or to discuss a personal problem. You have to make a date first. There's nothing like that fluid interchange of support and help that our mothers had.

She's right, to some extent. But you have to be the change you want to see. If you buy into the system that kids need activities galore and must have all moments accounted for, then no one will be around. Even if you buy into the system because you're looking for people because "no one is around." If you want people to be around, you must be around first. Then you deal, or you could play with your kids (I don't, but you could). Personally, I hang out at homeschool park days, and that is the closest I have seen to a fluid interchange of support. You have to make a date and be there, but then you just be.

One thing I enjoyed in this article is when Levine starts to identify a healthy parental attitude, calling it the "involved" parent. Here is an example of the best kind of parent of the three she identifies:

Say the kid comes home and says he has a math test. The involved parent says, "We want you to do well on that test, so you need to study between 7 and 8 after dinner for an hour."

Come on, "We want" is good parenting? How about not imposing your expectations or desires on your kids? How about, "if YOU want to do well on the test"? This example even has the parent controlling WHEN the child studies. So that is what a good parent looks like, a control freak, but less controlling and abusive than the others. Seriously, read about the "intrusive" parent she describes, that's not instrusive, its abusive (I think). At the least, its highly critical.

At the end of her article, Levine asserts,

Kids should never, ever, be paid for grades. Real learning is about effort and improvement, not performance.

A good start for the mainstream, I suppose. When you're ready for it, go see what Alfie Kohn has been saying for years.

Outrageous!

2006-07-22T07:35:00.000-05:00

Or as my husband said, "sometimes a case can be made for canceling our subscription to The Washington Post."

I'm am greeted this Saturday morning to my darling girls working with their daddy in the kitchen to make a bowl of pancake batter. I make my coffee and oatmeal and sit down to the paper. Suburban bliss, I'm okay with that, when I lived in the urbs, life was pretty similar. Anyway, what do I see on the front page of the Style Section but a cartoon derivative of Roy Lichtenstein of a boy and a girl embracing, with her thought bubble "This summer, maybe..." Oh no. Yup, unfold and its an article about girls losing their virginity in the summer with mid-life reminisces. Can't read it. Won't read it (not past the jump, at least). Glorifying the loss of virginity as a teen is irresponsible and pointless. I really don't want to read about some woman in her 40s who lost it at 16 to a guy with a Trans Am. Ick, I need a shower.

So, while I'm not reading the article, I will fill my time with some better thought bubbles of what the girl should be thinking instead of "This Summer, Maybe..."

"Should I really, knowing that he is probably at his absolute worst right now?"

"Will I embarrass myself with the memory of his Trans Am in a major newspaper in my 40s?"

"This will really get my dad back for being a jerk!"

"This will really get my mom back for being a witch!"

"I can't wait to tell all my friends so they'll think I'm cool."

"I wonder if lying and sneaking around in order to have sex when I'm so young with someone so undeserving will have harrowing repercussions for the rest of my life."

At least this article is on the front-page of the Style section (the section which includes the comics) with an eye-catching cartoon. We wouldn't want this generation of young women missing out on the victories of the sexual revolution. And what better way to let our teen daughters know that its time for them to have sex?

She Knows How Its Done

2006-07-17T19:49:00.000-05:00

Stephanie has an awesome post over at Life Without School on her response to the oft-heard remark by non-homeschoolers "I don't know how you do it." I did a post of my own on the same subject last year -- not as good as Stephanie's, but then, not as long, either ;-)

If you read the comments on Stephanie's post, you'll see me shooting my mouth off to "take the red pill." No, I'm not telling anyone to vote Republican, its a reference to the movie The Matrix.

Deep Thoughts at Trader Joe's

2006-07-13T18:18:00.000-05:00

Why did they change the name of their banana-vanilla yogurt from "banilla" to "vanana"?

Why School Is Wrong

2006-07-12T19:47:00.000-05:00

Okay, maybe this will only appeal to homeschoolers or unschoolers, but its my blog. Its called Animal School. I'm having trouble with my computer playing it all the way through and this post will be a nice reminder for me.

What If I'm Not Wasting My JD -- Part 2

2006-07-10T07:13:00.000-05:00

I updated and expanded my post and posted it over on Life Without School. I got a bit more radical this time.

The Issue of Play

2006-07-02T07:14:00.000-05:00

Do you ever read something, like an article, and then think about other things you've read that respond to it, argue against it, support it? I do, maybe because the issues important to me are so few and I read infrequently.

Today's Washington Post has an article, Kids' Game or Animal Instinct?, about play -- animals playing, humans playing -- and why its important. Of course, I love these articles because I always find support in them for my homeschooling decision. Do I need justification or do I just post these things in hopes that someone understands me? Dunno, don't care; posting to my blog keeps me off the streets.

In light of concerns about homeschooled children getting socialization, I found this particularly interesting:

So important is play in learning how to fit in with others that some studies -- of orphans tied to cribs or kittens deprived of play -- show that they are more likely to become social misfits.

There was some study that came out of Stanford months ago that suggested that kids in daycare may suffer from lack of social skills. Interesting, you'd think they would play a lot in daycare, maybe they are tied to their cribs? Dunno.

The other article I think of as I read about the importance of play are articles about schools and the battle over getting a minimum amount of recess time set as county policy. Shrinking recess in elementary school really upsets me -- kids need to run and play. Oh well, I've addressed that problem in my family, recess lasts the entire day.

Finally, have I ever mentioned that Mr. unclimber read Jonathan Frazen's The Corrections a couple of years ago and always comments on the parallels between the educational system and prisons?

How Do You Like Teaching?

2006-07-01T13:44:00.000-05:00

I was asked that by some parents I met on the beach while on vacation. Their daughter will be attending a private school for kindergarten for which she had to pass some test. Poor thing is going to their fourth-choice school, she failed the group interview at another one because she didn't talk. She's 5 and her lack of desire to speak in a group situation with strangers dings her from the private school. Well, I suppose some lessons are best learned early. Exactly what that lesson is, I will leave to the reader to determine.

As a homeschooler, how do I like teaching? I don't. Not that I don't like teaching, I don't teach, at least not the way I remember my teachers teaching. If there's an analogy, but I can't find it. I sort of exist around my children, watching. They constantly amaze me with their learning, especially the oldest. She has figured out that when she wants to spell a word, she simply has to recall where she read it, find the book and the word, and viola, she can copy the word. I didn't teach her that. Or did I? I think I mentioned that process a year or so ago, so either she remembered or figured it out on her own.

Suzanne came and told me that 16 plus 16 equals 32. I asked her how she knew that and she told me she figured it out on her toy abacus. Oh good, because I can't figure out how to work that thing despite several internet searches. Its probably better I didn't find any usage tips, I might have tried to teach her to use it.

She has also figured out that if she wants to use her Learning Wrap Up of states and capitals that she needs to get her U.S. map placemat to find out the capitals of the various states. Thats learning without teaching. Well, maybe I suggested that to her a few months ago as well.

So maybe I am teaching, I really never noticed. She is definitely learning, though, I notice that all the time.

What if I'm Not Wasting My JD?

2006-06-21T07:24:00.002-05:00

At a homeschooler's park day yesterday, I discussed the Washington Post piece I blogged about yesterday, with a friend. She was talking about the underlying article in the American Prospect but I haven't read it. When I went to the link this morning, I quickly bailed on the article -- there is just not enough time to blog about the minutiae in my life and read an article by a feminist scholar. Yup, and I sold my volumes of Camille Paglia at a used book store last year to buy a homeschooling book. Thats right, go ahead and cry.

As I alluded to in my comment on my last post (if I don't talk to myself, who else will?), I wonder if this view of women wasting their education and careers by being at home misses an important point. It seems the argument is that women should buy into the current corporate paradigm of power. We must work at jobs while our children are young so that we can be the power brokers of the future. Only in achieving conventional success, will we be a success, the theory seems to say. There are some nice political words for this which escape me because I've filled my brain with such trivia as my DH's preferred orange juice (Tropicana Pure Premium Original, aka, no pulp). What is the term? Subscribing to the male dominated power structure, accepting the current paradigm, what? Something about accepting what others have decided without deciding it for yourself. Maybe Linda knows.

My point is, perhaps its possible that these rich, overprivileged, educated women are looking for something better than what the corporate world has to offer. Maybe they are wrong, but maybe they aren't. Maybe these at-home mommies are the real risk-takers, betting that their careers and their lives are better off for the path they are taking (not to mention how they feel about their children).

An example: I worked as an attorney for a government agency for three years before having my first child, after which I stayed home to be with her. Now, I'm a homeschooler, a completely unanticipated turn of events for me (I always thought they were religious fundamentalists and I am not). I've only been asked once if I felt I wasted my degree. Reflecting on that conversation, the only thing I felt I wasted was the time spent talking to that person.

Anyway, what if in 15 years or so, I move on to a completely different career? What if my "time at home" helps me craft a new path because of the volunteer work I'm doing now for causes I believe in far more strongly than whether a particular imported item should be duty-free under NAFTA. Oh, I may never get my GS-14 which I may rightly deserve, but is the women's movement really worse off for that? What if I become an executive director of an organization that helps abused women? What if I become a lobbyist on children's issues? Am I a failure because my salary isn't as big as it could be?

To me, working while my children are young isn't about career advancement or social movements. Its about material acquisition and consumerism. (In a earlier blog post, I wrote about an article that suggested that at-home moms should thank working women for making the world a better place. The article was written by a woman who used to market Splenda in South America. And she thinks she was a hero of the women's movement?) I'm happy with what I have -- I am spoiled enough, I don't need more. So what if I spend my time with my kids. Whats it to you? If career achievement is blooming, can't you tolerate a late-bloomer?

And trust me, I plan to do something with my JD, even if its only to spout off at the male attorneys at the top of the current domination system. Actually, I do that now, so maybe I am a working woman.

Note: I polished this up, tried to de-inflame it a bit and posted it to the Life Without School community blog.

Concept -- there are no Mommy Wars

2006-06-20T10:51:00.000-05:00

Being an unclimber, I'll never be the first to reach the top (okay, I won't reach the top, period). This is my explanation for the lack of timiliness of this post. A friend of mine told me about a Washington Post Outlook piece, Everybody Hates Linda (that was the headline in the print edition). I missed this on Sunday but read it today. Interesting and thought-provoking. It made me think that I'm glad I didn't post my 1996 wedding in The New York Times. Now there is a statistically meaningful sample for trends in the U.S.

Anyway, what if there are no Mommy Wars? I know many would be disappointed, but I see it as an extension of who is sitting where and with whom in the high school cafeteria. Does it really matter in the grand scheme of things?

If it takes a village, we are in sorry shape, folks. The village is empty.

Homeschool at Home

2006-06-19T13:05:00.000-05:00

What a concept. Seriously, I'm doing some soul-searching about the future of our homeschool. Suzanne has just finished her kindergarten year. That sounds so odd to me -- "finished" and "kindergarten year." We never finish learning and the whole "kindergarten year" goes out the window because we don't 'do' anything as unschoolers. (Don't let that frighten you, Suzanne actually knows a lot more than if she had attended school). I let her call herself whatever she likes. She decided that 6 year-olds are first graders, so according to her, she began first grade last month. If she says shes a high school junior next month, thats fine with me.

Anyway, we've been busy this year with activities. Well, maybe about three activities a week with only one or two free days, which I view as busy. Of course, I have some friends who average about two activities a day. I'm trying to decide what we should do next year, especially since we're dropping some activities and I'm wondering if and how we'll replace them.

My husband keeps warning me that my second daughter, who is tempermentally similar to himself, is going to need a lot of attention next year. He's basically advising me not to overbook our activities.

I'm currently walking around in a muddle about my feelings regarding community, learning, and solitude. Just when I think I've got it figured out, it turns out I'm wrong. Suzanne decided she didn't want to go to a homeschool park day today. Fine, I thought, she wants more time at home. Only she then told me that she wanted to go for a walk outside and find some kids in the neighborhood with whom to play. Problem -- most kids are in school (and will be in camp once school ends) or in some form of childcare. If we want to do playdates, we have to pre-arrange them. Thats why I thought a homeschool park day would be fun. Maybe I should write the suburban mom's version of Catch-22.

Bicycles and the Homeschool Dad

2006-05-08T09:05:00.000-05:00

I was recently tipped off to this blog, Racing Union, by a homeschool mom. Her husband is part of the union, and one of the authors of the blog, I think (thus, the homeschool dad tie-in). Though the union is comprised of homeschooler and non-homeschoolers -- so anyone who is interested ought to check this out.

Why do I find this website amusing? Its posts like these....

Tough Times for Preschools

2006-04-26T06:37:00.000-05:00

Today's front page of The Washington Post (below the fold), warned of dire space shortages at area preschools.

For years, I have heard and read about parents jockeying to get their kids in a good preschool -- sleeping in cars to ensure their place in line on registration day. This article focuses on the lack of space for preschools more so than the competitive drive of the parents. This article focuses on the immigrant population, the quotes at least come from parents not born in the U.S.

The article makes a few comments about the need for preschool --

Local officials attribute the crunch to a soaring demand for preschool, fueled in part by immigrant parents who live inside the Beltway, tend to have larger families and have become more aware of the benefits of preschool. Studies have shown that children who attend preschool generally have higher success rates in elementary school and beyond.

and this

She said the families she works with have high birthrates and are increasingly aware that preschool is an investment in their children's future.
"But when the family gets that awareness, they turn around and
there's no center," she said.

Why is preschool necessary and why are immigrant populations becoming aware of its necessity? Is it possible that someone is bullying them into thinking that they are inadequate to teach their children colors, numbers and letters? I don't know, but personally, I like William Raspberry's approach better.

But I am convinced that all the other things we do will have limited impact unless we also undertake to enhance the competence of our children's first and most effective teachers: their parents.

He has started a small program that focuses on the home:

Baby Steps, I call it, and the major aim is to help parents understand the critical value of what they do at home. We try to do it by teaching parents of young children -- birth to age 5 -- some of the tricks for getting them ready for learning and for life. And we try to make it fun.

Back to the preschool article -- it continues to address potential solutions to the dearth of preschools:

Some states have begun to consider universal preschool: Georgia has it, and Florida is working toward it.

I'm not sure how Universal Preschool will solve the problem of lack of space for preschools. Maybe the government takes over and can use imminent domain to force the reticent churches to give over their space for preschool?

Hmmmm...I wonder how those universal preschool efforts are going in Georgia and Florida? I don't think everything is hunky dory and in other states considering it, there are some serious fights going on. Certainly, universal preschool is not a magic bullet.

What goes on in preschool that is so important?

On a recent afternoon at a center on Mount Vernon Avenue, one of the two that will close, children called out numbers and colors with a teacher as their mothers looked on.

I always thought that an involved parent can cover stuff like that at home. Read about preschool and see what goes on at a typical preschool -- its not that big of a deal. Certainly not worth sleeping in a car, if you ask me. (And if you want to read about what is wrong with preschool, I wouldn't stop you) As to 'socialization' (assuming you don't examine the issue and decide there is a greater downside to preschool socialization than there is an upside), there are always playgrounds where your child can get sand thrown in her face or pushed over for a shovel.

Morena Parada, a Salvadoran immigrant who is an assistant at the center, said that enrolling her daughter Diana, 4, there has enabled her to work and has taught her daughter to get along with others.

Aha -- its a daycare issue. Lets call it what it is. An ancilliary issue -- if the government took over and provided Universal Preschool, standards for teaching and assisting would follow and if this woman didn't have the time or money to get the required credentials, she could lose her job. So much for helping the immigrant population.

Educational Philosophy from the Rafters

2006-04-24T06:39:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post leads today's edition with a front page story on an 'alternative' high school in Maryland. Its a 'free school' in which kids aren't compelled to do anything -- no tests, no mandatory class attendence, no gold stars. And the kids are hanging from the rafters -- seriously, they put a big picture on the front page, above the fold. (If you want to see that picture, you need to click the link to the article and then click on the picture of the little girl looking at the snake and it will take you into the photo gallery. Whats up with the little girl and the snake? The print addition leads with kids hanging from the rafters and the on-line version shows a little girl looking at a snake -- how Biblical). Anyway, I'm detecting the message "If you don't compel kids to learn, they will be hanging from the rafters." The horror, the horror.

I don't see anything in this article worthy of a diatribe and that is a bit disappointing. I would like to add a bit of information about this type of school. While the article does trouble itself to mention the Sudbury School in Vermont from which the Fairhaven School, featured in the Post article, derives its educational model, it fails to mention A.S Neill's school in England and his book about it (hey, if its not American, why discuss it, right?).

Summerhill give a lot of background about this educational philosophy and even troubles itself to discuss why its not always successful with teens who have been in conventional schools all their lives. Basically, some are so trained by the stick and carrot of conventional school, that they have lost their internal motivation to learn (this can be overcome, but often it takes years of deschooling to get there. I guess it took me at least 8 years after law school.) Anyway, for those who want to go beyond the in-depth reporting of the Post to learn more about this philosophy, I'll provide a link to the Summerhill school's website, and some links to my own posts about the book, here on unclimber.

Interesting, seems Sudbury sees some differences between itself and the Summerhill school, so maybe my links miss the point. (The Sudbury School website allows for searching, which I briefly did, using the term Summerhill). Regardless, I think Summerhill makes for an interesting read.

Excuse me while my children and I climb the walls.

Homeschooling Support from Unexpected Places

2006-04-09T07:54:00.000-05:00

In an opinion piece in The Washington Post in which a couple of dames try to dismantle the myth of 'The Boy Crisis,' I have found statements that I think are supportive of homeschooling, though I doubt they were meant to be.

To demonstrate the timelessness of the concern over boys in school, the authors cite a quote from the early 1900s:

In Congress, Sen. Albert Beveridge of Indiana railed against overeducation. He urged young men to "avoid books and in fact avoid all artificial learning, for the forefathers put America on the right path by learning completely from natural experience."

Well, I certainly agree, though I extend this to girls as well -- my own, in fact.

This piece does make me giggle. I don't pass judgment on whether there is a boys crisis or not, I have girls, what do I know? I have seen a lot of posts on homeschool lists about the negative effects school has had on all students (of course, that is why they turned to homeschooling). I don't think life is easy for any kids in school.

Anyway, the authors question whether there really is a crisis.

The boy crisis we're hearing about is largely a manufactured one, the product of both a backlash against the women's movement and the media's penchant for continuously churning out news about the latest dire threat to the nation.

Personally, I think its just filler until another hard-hitting, news article about the Mommy Wars is written.

The opinion piece goes on to allay any fears that parents of boys may have -- turns out that white suburban boys are just fine (phew!), its the inner city and rural boys who are having the problem. No solution is offered for their problems, it seems it is enough to know that if you're white and living in the suburbs (like perhaps much of the paper's readership), then you really don't have to worry about the boys crisis. I think I'm overly sensitive, but it strikes me as offensive that the authors suggest there is a problem and then don't address it. I'm being unfair, they simply frame the problem differently -- they see the problem as white suburban parents worrying about their sons and the solution is not to worry.

The opinion piece rounds to its point, that boys-only institutions are really not needed to address the boys crisis, because there is no boys crisis (for suburban white males).

Have you ever talked to a feminist about the value of single-sex education for females? I used to be very against the idea, feeling that society is comprised of both men and women and its good to have them together in class because you'll have to deal with them together in 'the real world.' A friend of mine (a Smith alumna) sold me on the benefits of women-only colleges -- I'm not a proponent of them, but I no longer disagree with the concept philosophically. Of course I can't, I'm a homeschooler and my old argument could be turned against me -- why don't you put your kids in school, they'll have to deal with other people throughout life? (of course, as homescholers, we deal with other people everyday, just not agemates in a cell block). The argument doesn't really work in a homeschooling context because adults generally don't act like elementary or middle school students. We may have to put the kids in high school though, since adults do tend to act like high schoolers.

But, I digress. I don't know if the authors consider themselves feminists and even if they do, they may not think that single-sex education is good for women. And even if they do, they still have a right to think its not a good idea for boys. I guess I could read their book.

The piece ends with a ringing endorsement of homeschooling (albeit unintentional):

Obsessing about a boy crisis or thinking that American teachers are waging a war on boys won't help kids. What will is recognizing that students are individuals, with many different skills and abilities. And that goes for both girls and boys.

And that is why I homeschool.

Homeschool Field Trip -- Potato Chip Heaven

2006-04-06T07:47:00.000-05:00

We had an awesome field trip on Saturday to the Route 11 Chip Factory. (My DH found this by perusing a website that lists factory tours available across the US). Odd that its listed on the factory tour page since it expressly says on its own page that it does not offer factory tours. But you can watch guys stir big potato fryers with a rake and sprinkle salt over a trough of freshly fried chips (the bottom picture pretty much sums it up).

Of course, you could also sample different flavors of potato chips. As I asked my DH when he proposed the trip "so we're going to take a one hour car ride to go eat potato chips?"

The factory was a bit underwhelming, but its good to get out and we eat lunch at a restaurant down the street, the Wayside Inn. I impressed the maitre'd by asking if a particular piece was a linen press or a book press (thank you, DAR, for the docent training). He offered to let us see a few of the rooms after our lunch. Of course, he was hoping to sell the place to us for a future stay, but I like to think he was impressed by my interest and knowledge in Colonial period home furnishings. The building was rather neat and we got to see a well from the 1740s.

After leaving Middletown, we headed for Sky Meadow State park and walked up a hill. It was good exercise after eating all those chips, but DH took the brunt of it because Gabrielle wanted to be carried. I think it lifted his spirits when I started to hum the theme from Rocky, though I was not thinking of the running through Phildelphia scene from the first, but the dog-sled pulling training he did in the fourth. I'm sort of disturbed that I'm this familiar with the Rocky franchise.

Kudos to the PR Princess

2006-03-25T11:31:00.001-05:00

Awesome press coverage -- on the front page of the Washington Post's Style section I got a treat with my breakfast this morning, an article about Club Libby Lu. I've blogged about Club Libby Lu before, first expressing my uncertainty and later my horror over the implications of such a place.

I really can't believe this picture, in the print edition, it was three columns wide and equally tall (i.e. it was a large, square picture), above the fold on the front page of the Style section. Do the parents not realize that a pedophile would think they hit paydirt with that image for their own personal use? If they don't actually have the newspaper, its comforting to know they can find and buy the image on-line. Yuck.

Am I being overly sensitive here? Maybe my long-ago interest in becoming a sex crimes prosecutor has made me overly cautious. But there are monsters out there who like little girls, I really don't think its a good idea to be dressing your kiddie up and urging her to shake her thing in the store front of a local mall. Don't prostitutes in Amsterdam have store fronts? I wonder if they dance.

Sometimes people walking through the mall gather by the windows at Club Libby Lu to watch the spectacle of little girls: all that pink and glitter. All that flesh, too.
A woman passing by says to three blondes in tight outfits, the youngest of whom is 4: "If you're wearing those kind of clothes, you gotta shake your booty."

At least the parents are paying a lot of money for this.

They come here for the makeover parties, which start at $21.50 per girl, and they stay at least an hour, and they buy.

Well, what else are the kids going to do anyway?

Is this business of pretend headsets and pants so low the waistbands of little girls' underwear shows -- is this business a girl's fantasy or is it a marketer's fantasy? Would little girls be as satisfied to dress up like 19th-century frontier women?

Maybe. It might be worth a try. There are plenty of places where kids can wear historical costumes and learn or play. Granted, you won't find them in a mall.
Turns out that Club Libby Lu is really providing a service.

In some newspapers, Blaizgis says, Club Libby Lu has been the victim of a "feminist backlash." She says articles have suggested Club Libby Lu is "forcing girls to grow up too quickly." What she hopes to get across is the store's "sense of fun."
"We are about fun and play and pretend," Blaizgis explains another day.

Well of course Club Libby Lu is not forcing the girls to grow up, the parents are willingly paying lots of money for this. And what about those feminists, don't they realize how fun dressing up is? Are they just jealous because they have aged out of Club Libby Lu? They need not worry, why across the mall is a large Victoria's Secret where they can indulge in their own "fun and play and pretend." Likewise, when the Club Libby Luers outgrow the store at age 13, they too will have a place to go.
I just hope they don't run into any pedophiles in the meantime. I know, I'm no fun -- I guess dressing up at home with your friends doesn't hold the same thrill. And its free, so no one knows how much money you are able to spend on your child's birthday party.