Work in Progress Wednesday

Work continues on FiFi, the sweater I had planned to complete before the Olympic flame was extinguished:



I am quite uninterested in it, but don't care to have it hanging around half knit. I'm doing maybe 2 rounds per day, on average. I am determined to finish it before starting anything else.

The weather has turned to autumn. Who wants to knit a short-sleeved sweater out of Rowan Calmer when a hint of knitting long-sleeved wool sweaters is in the air?

Latin

Last spring I was studying Latin on a regular basis -- 30 minutes per day of Henle.

I put it aside for the summer.

I put it out of my mind. Totally.

I got the books out today. "In Latin some prepositions are followed by the ablative case, some by the accusative case.... always learn what case a preposition governs." Accusative? Ablative? Ummm, let's see, Never Gag Down An Ant, so those are the last 2, but which one is which?

And the singular versus the plural declensions? No longer something I know.

I feel like I'm doing an archeological dig in my brain, trying to remember this stuff.

So eery to realize that I could understand this just a couple of months ago.

Curls

A discussion arose the other day on the WellTrainedMind forum about curling hair. A mom asked how to give her 11 year old daughter curls -- she had tried various methods, but the curls fell out as quickly as she put them in.

I can relate. When Thalia was young and in ballet/tap/jazz classes she wanted fancy, curly hair for recital. Unfortunately her hair was straight as a stick, and Would. Not. Hold. A. Curl. Uh-uh, no way. I used a curling iron, hot rollers, sponge rollers left in overnight, various hairsprays, and still ended up with a dismal flop.

Fast forward, and we join Irish Dance. We are asked to curl hair. Oh, I dreaded it, let me tell you. I was sure it wouldn't work.

But, whaddya know, it did.

We had a performance last Saturday and AnnaBeth requested that I curl her hair in lieu of having a wig on (wigs are hot and itchy). So I took some pictures while we went through the process.

(Also, I discovered why people who post a lot of pictures tend not to use Blogger. Trying to sort out all of these in the post is really annoying in the Blogger system.)

Here's what AnnaBeth's hair looks like plain:





It's fine and rather thin. For the record, Thalia has long, thick hair, and we've curled it plenty of times, too.

Here are my tools:





From Sally's Beauty Supply we have SalonCare Super Firm Styling Gel. It's an unattractive yellow gel that comes in various size jars. I'm on my second 12 oz. jar. We also have Sally's Jumbo End Wraps. And we have some packages of Soft Spike curlers. We bought these at the dance studio. I typically use 2 packages (30 spikes per package) on AnnaBeth's hair, and 3 packages on Thalia's. If I'm doing both girls, though, the second one gets drastically fewer spikes, as the charm of curling hair really wears thin after an hour or so.

I've got the spikes I need opened up and ready to go so I don't have to fumble around with them. Also, I've put them all on a tray next to the chair I'll sit in.

I'm curling her hair on Friday afternoon; our performance is Saturday afternoon. This way we'll have plenty of time for the gel to dry.

Note that I'm working on dry hair, wetting it only with the gel.

For the hairstyle we use for performances, we make a part from ear to ear and draw that front hair up into a pony tail:




Starting in the little ponytail, take a lock of hair about half as big as your pinkie:




Coat it with gel from roots to tip, after which it will stick straight up into the air by itself:

(From here on out I'm fumbling around with the gel all over my fingers while I'm trying to take pictures, so expect them to be a little wonky.)



Put an end paper over the end, and roll up on the spike:




Wrap:




Et voila! One curl done!




Finish up the ponytail:




Then start curling the main head of hair, moving row by row front to back:




Almost done! She's looking through a magazine here; sometimes we watch movies while we do this. By this time my fingers are cold from glopping around in the gel for so long.





Next morning and we're already taking some out. Same view as the picture above. We start taking them out at the bottom so we don't end up with a tangled mess.



Action shot of Thalia unwrapping a curl (looks like she should've been picking up the couch pillow and papers all over the floor instead of messing with this, sigh):




And SPROING!



Speaking of having a mess on the floor, the discarded spikes and end papers need to be corralled:



We took them out before dance class. This will give them some time to relax a bit before the show:










Later that afternoon, having already bounced around in class, she's ready to go on stage:



It was a beautiful day, but those dresses are hot and heavy. She was feeling pretty good about her decision to not wear a wig.


After the show the curls are a little droopier:



She put on a hairnet overnight, and had curly hair Sunday morning for church:




Sunday afternoon she wore the whole thing, curls and all, back in a ponytail. Then started brushing the front curls out with a hairbrush. By Monday morning, having spent the night without a hairnet, the curls were looking pretty droopy and she was ready to wash them out:

Weekly Report -- Sept. 5

Gah! Having only 4 days this week was tough. Yes, most of our curriculum is divided into nice little 4 day segments, but this particular short-week also featured an orthodontist appointment, the first Scout meetings of the year, a trip to the airport to pick up Daddy, a piano lesson, and about 8 hours of dance lessons.

We did manage to fit in some school here and there. Annabeth did 3 days of Writing With Ease, 4 days of RightStart C and First Language Lessons 3, and a couple of days of both French and Latin. Thalia did Life of Fred Algebra all 4 days, and then some Latin and Spanish.

We still aren't totally up to speed on all of our outside activities. Next week we'll be adding swimming lessons and choir to the mix. Should be interesting.

100 Species Challenge

1. Strawberry
2. Black-eyed Susan


3.  Rose of Sharon, Althea



Rose of Sharon is an easy-to-grow shrub. Unlike many flowering shrubs, it blooms in late summer. It's an old-fashioned shrub, tall, with a vase-shape. Here is a photo of a mature speciman; the ones in our yard are fairly young, closer to my height and not very wide. We see a spectacular Rose of Sharon that's probably 15 feet tall when we drive to piano lessons.

What I learned about Rose of Sharon while preparing this entry: trim in the early spring. I should know this stuff, but I never can remember whether to trim various shrubs in the fall or the spring, new growth or old growth, etc. etc. Really, though, Rose of Sharon does just fine without pruning, provided you plant it in a spot big enough for its mature growth.

What is this 100 Species Challenge? See blog entry here, or click on the label in the sidebar.

Wordless Wednesday

Edited to add:  I think these are cicada exoskeletons.  I noticed them while mowing the lawn Monday.

Kansas City

This is our second year to attend the Kansas City Feis. It's a fun weekend. Several families from our dance school go to this feis. Most also attend the Kansas City Irish Fest, of which the feis is actually part. We didn't set foot in the Irish Fest, though, preferring to hang out at the hotel pool. The weather was gorgeous, and who can resist a roof top pool?

Thalia and AnnaBeth did well at the feis. AnnaBeth placed first in two of her dances, earning her first gold medals. Their teacher has suggested that both of them compete in a couple of Novice dances at the next feis. They've certainly earned their place at that level.

The feis itself is nicely laid out. Our biggest quibble was with the constant switching around of adjudicators. The rules state that you can't judge a dancer that dances with a school you're connected with, which makes sense. BUT, there was much switching around of adjudicators to accommodate the dancer/adjudicator combinations -- it might've been simpler to get adjudicators from a different region whose schools weren't represented. Then again, dancers from all over the U.S. participated, and the rules for what's considered "connection" are getting more and more far reaching (for example, if a dancer from School X practices at School Y -- not taking classes, but just practicing in their studio -- everyone of School X is associated with School Y and vice versa, so adjudicators from School X or Y can't judge anyone from either school. It's Byzantine in complexity.).

Unlike last feis I didn't take any pictures before the dancing started. This was a mistake, since by the end of the day our dancers weren't in the mood to pose for pictures, refusing to put the school dress back on and stand in front of the indoor waterfall at the hotel:




and just sort of looked dazed:



Next morning we headed out to visit Aunt D. After church we went to her house for lunch, where she introduced us to the game ladderball . It's a hoot -- you throw bolos around rungs of a ladder, and get points basis what rung your bolo wraps around.





And after lunch we headed back home. We didn't get far before the backseat crowd zonked:



The rest of the weekend was pretty quiet, recovering from 2 weekends of feising in a row.