Snow Day

Everything we were supposed to do today got cancelled.  As a matter of fact, most of it was cancelled last night before the snow even started.  I was out this morning returning overdue library books before any precipitation began, and it was eery -- everything was still calm and dry, but very light traffic.

A few hours later the UPS truck almost got stuck on our street.  

Annabeth is the only one of us who has ventured out in it.  Thalia is sick with a cold.  Other household members have strong opinions about how to spend a day like today:

A few days ago we got a DVD player that can connect directly to our Amazon Prime account so we can watch Star Trek reruns on free streaming.  Add some knitting, and let it snow!

(This is the beginnings of a Mini Mania Scarf.)

Work in Progress Wednesday

McCall's 6141

This is one of Marguerite's dresses in Scarlet Pimpernel.  Although the pattern is supposed to be Renaissance, it gets used for Regency.    It still needs trim, which hasn't been purchased yet, mostly because no one's found anything that matches and looks appropriate.

For ease of quick changing between scenes we ditched the back laces called for in the pattern, and used velcro in back.

I semi-lined the bodice.  The pattern has a bagged bodice lining, but that would make alterations crazy. I sort of used the lining pieces as giant facing pieces -- I sewed them to the neck and back, then flipped them to the inside and serged them to the edges of the bodice pieces.  I then made darts and sewed seams with the 2 pieces (lining plus fashion fabric) held together.

I had to lengthen the lower sleeve.  I also took out some of the bust curve.

The solid blue is a stretch satin.  It wrinkles easily.  The brocade is surprisingly lightweight.  The fabrics are from Hancock.

The whole thing has sort of a dumpy nightgown vibe.  It looks okay when the actress puts it on, though.

Other Pursuits

When not working on their school work or attending various classes, the kids have been busy:

Babysitting.  They have a weekly job at a church during a Bible study, and also babysit for the neighbors.

Singing in choirs.

Taking voice lessons.  Thalia was in a recital her voice teacher had a couple of weeks ago.  She started with the teacher back in September.  Annabeth started lessons after the recital.

(I love the acoustics in this recital hall, by the way.)

Girl Scouts, shown here at the skating rink.

Taking ballet. They take 2 different places, by the way, one of which uses Vaganova, and the other  seems to use more of a  Cecchetti style.  And, of course, they argue about why each has chosen the superior style.

Taking tap.  They are with the same teacher in the same class, so theoretically fewer arguments.

Thalia is in rehearsals for Scarlet Pimpernell.

Annabeth will be the Cat in Seussical.

Thalia is production assistant for Seussical.

******

In the meantime, I've been crocheting a boatload of collars (19 total) for the Irish Dance studio:

 A wad of 8 collars.  Someone asked me if I was making basketball nets.

 Eight MORE collars, but pressed and folded.

 Three school collars.  

 Closeup of a school collar.  These are highly annoying to make.  At least one of the old collars disappeared when someone decided to clean it in straight bleach.  DON'T DO THAT!  Straight bleach will destroy the fibers, as they discovered when the entire thing sort of disintegrated.   Use water with a little bleach added.  Or use peroxide.  Otherwise I will stab you in the hand with one of those pointy metal crochet hooks 

I finished all of the crocheting last Thursday afternoon.  It's Monday afternoon, and my hands are still sore.

And now it's time to start some serious sewing for  Pimpernell.  I'm so glad I have quality help for this:

Happy Rat-iversary, Farley!

You came to live here 2 years ago, a teeny tiny ratty girl.

Since then you've made friends with lots of people,

and other rats.

You've explored lots of places

including every rat's favorite, the trash can,

and even the great outdoors.

You've often tried to learn to use the computer, or at least the keyboard.

You've celebrated many holidays with us.

You've eaten several pounds of Cheerios

and Chex.

And, mostly, you've been a great example of how cute, friendly and smart a pet rat can be!

Midyear Homeschool Snapshot

Last semester Thalia took 2 classes at a local university as a dual-enrolled student.  One was a basic English class that included studying grammar, writing essays, and doing some presentations. She's done with English for the year (in general, a semester-long college class is equal to a full credit of high school -- there are exceptions, of course).  The other was Spanish 1; she's taking Spanish 2 this semester, so she'll have 2 full credits of Spanish by May.

She's taking a year-long Chemistry class that a retired chemist is teaching in his basement lab.  He's teaching 2 classes this school year, each one meeting one day per week.  A few of the kids dropped out at the end of the semester, saying it was too hard.  On the other hand, when he emailed Thalia her semester grade over Christmas he included something to the effect that he hoped he could make the class challenging enough for her.  Not that she's some super-genius in chemistry, but the Kinetic Physics - Principles of Physics she took last year was so rigorous that now chemistry seems easy-peasy.  Also, I have the impression that chemistry makes a lot more sense if you've already had physics (I took it the other way around in high school, but I can see the logic of physics first if you've taken enough math to accomplish it).

Health class is taught at the co-op we attend.  The woman teaching it is a nurse, and a believer in the more-is-more philosophy of homeschooling.  Quick background on why I say that: Missouri requires public schools to provide 7,830 minutes of instruction per credit, according to this pdf from the Dept. of Education and Secondary Education -- if you do the math, that's 130.5 hours.  On the other hand, the same website, different page tells us that a homeschool high school credit is 100 hours.  The co-op health teacher has decided to go with the higher standard, and cramming a LOT of info into the half-credit class.
 
The book they're using is Total Health.  Thalia's commentary yesterday while reading the book:
"Why is the word another even in this sentence - it doesn't make sense.  This reads like it was written by an English as Second Language student who had a dictionary but didn't really know what the words actually mean;"
[Reading this is] "like watching a trainwreck - you just can't bring yourself to look away;"
"This is why people don't want to become Christian - because they see stupid stuff like this and don't want to be involved."

So, in summary, she loves the teacher but scorns the book.  No word yet on whether it will replace Apologia as her most despised textbook, but it seems to be in the running.

We also purchased a Thinkwell AP Government course when they were on sale at Homeschool Buyer's Co-op, and she's working through that.  I'm not sure yet if she'll take the AP exam in May.  Thinkwell has 3 lecturers for the course, who have different presentation styles.  This works well from the standpoint that if you dislike one, that person is only there for part of the time.

Math is done here at home.  This year is Pre-Calc, using Lial's.  It's a long slog.

Annabeth is using Lial's Basic College Math as a pre-algebra text.  Sometimes the questions are about things she has no experience in, such as whether $18.76 seems like a plausible car payment.

She continues to work on History Odyssey Middle Ages Level 2, from Pandia Press.  Once this is done we will be done with History Odyssey -- she's developed an intense dislike for the program.  She finds the assignments to be lame.  I could go through and reformulate all of the assignments, but if I'm going to do that I might as well save my money and start from scratch with a different spine than Kingfisher History Encyclopedia.   She's quite close to the end, so we need to figure out the next thing soon.

One nice thing about History Odyssey is that it requires quite a few essays, and can count towards a writing class.  English for Annabeth is rounded out with Analytical Grammar.

Annabeth is taking ASL at co-op.  She really enjoys the class.  She's also taking Interior Design there, which she complains about constantly -- this is the spring segment of Home Ec, which covered sewing in the fall. The class has too much lecture and too few projects for her taste.

Her science class is CPO Earth Science, which I'm teaching at the co-op.  It's a reasonably fun class, and I think she's learning quite a bit.  I really like CPO, and I think she does, too.  But I really dislike teaching an entire class of middle schoolers.  There are only 9 kids.  I try to include things that are only doable with a group of 9 rather than home alone, but, still, gah.  I'd rather be home alone.

Work in Progress Wednesday

I keep thinking that I'm going to start blogging on a more regular basis, but then I get caught up in the transient pleasures of having clean dishes or clean laundry or a balanced checkbook or all the math homework graded.  Silly me.

Most of my free time -- also known as "time I'm sitting around waiting for someone who is currently in a class to which I drove them" has been spent crocheting:

Yes, the world competition of Irish Dance is in Boston this year, and our former school would like to send lots of teams, which means they're making new ceili team dresses, which means they need 16 new collars.  They're using the same pattern as they used for the choreography team a couple of years ago.

I've posted the pattern online on Ravelry for all the world to see and use, but they called me to make them.  We didn't discuss price beyond "we'll pay you for this."  Last time I donated my time and materials; I'm not planning to do so this time, but I'm pondering what to set as a fair price.

I've also been amassing fabric.  Annabeth is playing the Cat in Seussical later this spring, and we thought it would be fun to make a skirt from this fabric.  The blue will be the main fabric, and the white-on-red will be insets.  We found it at Fabric.com.

Fabric.com had a big sale at the time, and I bought some other stuff to make tshirts and tops.  I also threw out an equivalent amount of fabric odds and ends from the closet where I store all of this stuff -- I took the Fabric.com box and filled it to overflowing with scraps, then pitched it all in the trash.  Yay me for not accumulating more than I'm using up, right?

Except JoAnn had a sale on character cottons, flannels, and fleece, PLUS had an extra 25% off if you showed your educator discount card.  Well, who could resist this stuff:

I would've bought more of that stuff on top, but someone else beat me to it.  I have no clue what I'm going to do with any of this except the red, which is flannel -- that is going to be jammy pants for Thalia.  Assuming I ever get around to sewing anything, that is, given that I' spending even less time sewing than I am blogging.  We'll see.

Work in Progress Wednesday

I've been sewing the Linda pant from StyleArc patterns.  I've made 3 pairs since Christmas, and am ready to start prepping fabric on pair number 4.

I'd made this pattern a couple of times last spring in some stretch bengaline from JoAnn Fabric -- stretch bengaline is the specific fabric called for on the pattern.  But, alas, the JoAnn version of that fabric ... has issues.  Specifically, the black dye rubs off on anything cotton I wear (yes, even months later and after being washed so many times), plus it feels prickly against my skin (probably a reaction to the dye).  

Then I'd made 3 cropped/capri versions over the summer in various lightweight stretch wovens.

On Christmas Day I started browsing my stash of bottomweights for anything appropriate for the pattern.  I found some black lightweight something-or-other from somewhere-or-other, then I stopped by Hancock's a few days later and found some grey stretch poly-rayon suiting on sale for about $9 total cost (I'm pretty sure that's what's in the photo), then stopped by JoAnn to discover a heavier mauve poly-rayon twill that I could use a 50%-off coupon to purchase (about $13 total cost for fabric), and then JoAnn put ALL of the suiting on sale this week, so I bought more.

I know the StyleArc pattern is pricey -- you have to pay shipping from Australia, plus they're more expensive than the 99 cent pattern sales at the stores.  But I'm able to make pants quickly for about $10-$15 per pair worth of fabric and notions.  I've made 8 pairs of pants off of this pattern so far, and have plans for at least 2 more., so cost of pattern per pair is looking better and better.

Also, I began the New Year using my new camera (a Christmas present) to photograph some of the yarn stash I'd totally forgotten about owning.  After I got the piles sorted, I browsed Ravelry for patterns that would match up with the piles.  Then I started swatching. 

That project got set aside, though, when a friend on an online forum had a crisis.  Several people decided to band together to make a quilt for her.  I said I'd make a square.

Unperturbed that I have no clue what I'm doing, I decided I wanted to embroider a labyrinth, since it might be meditative/interesting/fun/soothing to trace the path with a finger while wrapped in the quilt.  I chose multi-color floss in the appropriate colors. I found an image of a labyrinth online, and played around with re-sizing it until it looked right for going onto a 9 inch (finished size) quilt square.

I traced the pattern onto Sulky tear-away, sewed the stabilizer to some white muslin, and started back stitching the pattern by hand.

I originally started at the outside, and then realized that it made more sense to start in the middle and work my way out.  I confined all my stitching to the actual pattern lines -- that is, I didn't cross over the gaps on the backside.

Then I tore the Sulky away using tweezers to pick it all out (I think there are still shreds in this photo).

Then I picked out some fabric for a backing.  I thought I might have different ideas about appropriate color and pattern after the embroidery was done.

I turned under the edges and sewed the labyrinth onto the 9.5 inch square as a applique.  I also sewed some more lines of white stitching following some of the rings and cross bars -- I'm hoping these help stabilize it.

And just now I've folded it up, put it in an envelope, and am mailing it to someone who volunteered to put all of the squares together.

Things I probably could improve on:  I traced the pattern in plain ol' pencil, I didn't back the embroidery with any sort of stabilizer before sewing it on to the backing cloth, I could've done something slicker for the final step of getting-rid-of-raw-edges-and-affixing-to-backing. Also, I considered putting something in the center -- a heart or a word or something -- but decided that might be twee.

In the meantime, lots of school stuff has started back up, and various other lessons and theater productions are going on.  More on that later.