One day to go (or further adventures of the obsessive knitter)

At some point in the afternoon I abandoned the packing.

It was too early to start on the wine and there were no choc chips left in the baking cupboard so the only alternative was wool therapy. I drove to a wool shop to buy another ball of sock wool that I'd run out of after knitting 3 socks. You knitters know what it's like, if I don't finish that 2nd pair of socks asap that poor lonely little sock will reside in the drawer of unfinished projects forever.

So wool shop it was. £20 later I came out with the ball of sock wool...and another ball of different sock wool...and 3 balls of wool that looked like the kind of thing I might make something out of one day when I finally finish knitting socks. If not then they'll make great loft insulation.

Wool shops warp your mind.

[Btw, for those of you who don't normally read my blog I do actually write about home education sometimes. Really. ]

The Incredible Sock-Making Woman and other tales...

Yes! Another pair!





I found this wool on my last wool-hunting expedition (the one that involved the unhygenic chip shop and a wind up toy rat). Only problem with this wool is that the repeat on the colour isn't very frequent, so I had to work really hard to get two socks that looked similar out of one ball of wool. They're very soft though. Shame I can't keep them - sent them to my mum as a belated Mother's Day present. Hopefully they'll fit. If not I'll have to do more knitting...


Other news?


Well dd has been seen in public sporting a very lovely hat. She even had a photo taken of her like this by a local attraction for her annual pass. Oh yes...it's those home educating nutters. You should see what they make their children wear.






Dd's fascination for millipedes and centipedes and other pedes is taking over the house. New tubs with their littlepede houses appear daily. Often with their lids left off. I am extraordinarily tolerant of this sort of thing, having kept various creatures in old Ferrero Rochet tubs under my bed, as a child. However when a dehydrated and rather crunchy centipede stuck to my sock yesterday and I padded around the house it did cross my mind that perhaps this isn't how normal families function.

Dd1 begged to do handwriting practice! (the alternative was a page of maths - God he must really hate maths). So he wrote some beautiful letters in beautiful handwriting...

And then put them to good use...

Don't you just love the eloquence of the English language?

Ds1 and ds2 designed their egg buggies for a home ed competition.

And the kids made puppet theatres out of cereal boxes. Well part-made. Dd was only mildly impressed with my efforts on hers, but she did enjoy the cutting out. Amazing the joy one can get from a pair of scissors and a glue stick.

And the boys were invited to a birthday party involving quad bikes.

Note the 'Oh God Mother put the camera away' look on my eldest's face...


And...so who invited the leopard to breakfast?

I hand made the costume about 7 years ago and NONE of my children have ever wanted to wear it. So what if it gets used to mop up Cheerios - we don't care. Go girl!

Question: When is a hen not a hen?

Answer: when it turns into a cockeral.

No, it's not a joke. It's a rather serious business actually.

Two mornings ago there was a strange noise outside in the early hours. I looked out, couldn't see anything (it was dark). The noise? Well it was just odd. Like a barking, croaking, gurgling, clucking sort of noise - but actually none of those.

And then this morning I heard it again. But this time it was a barking, croaking, gurgling, clucking sort of noise with 'a-doodle-doo' added at the end.

Now, I don't know a huge amount about hens. I feed them, I clean them out, I worm them, and I run around very quickly when they turn on me (especially when chicken food falls down the inside of my welly -a very dangerous situation indeed!). But the one thing I do know is that hens don't - as a rule - make any noise that involves 'a-doodle-doo'. Are you following my drift?

So my conclusion (being the Sherlock Holmes type) is that the cute fluffy chick that we raised last year, that looks like a hen and acts like a hen (well ok, so its legs are becoming mini tree trunks and it's got a nasty temper on it) is actually not a hen at all.

NOT A HEN.

Putting it simply: Lola is actually Charlie.

But it looks like a hen. Well except today, when it is looking less and less like a hen the more I examine it. But maybe that's because I have been influenced by the vocal suggestion that it may be something other than a hen (all the time it sounded like a hen, then it also looked like a hen).

My only thought is that it's one of those breeds that when I googled it said 'it's very difficult to sex these chickens, because the first you'll know about it is that they'll either lay an egg or they'll crow."

Bummer.

So why didn't somebody tell me that it takes 6 months before a hen - I mean a cockeral - starts to crow? So, it gets to puberty and starts strutting its funky stuff going 'hey, look at the cool dude here' or something like that? In a very loud and strange -'my voice has just broken' - noise. It's all news to me.

Well, whatever. All it means is that out goes 'egg-laying potential' and in comes 'potential to mightily pee-off the neighbours'.

Don't suppose anyone want a free lunch (with feathers)?

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Ok, on to the home ed now. Yes, I know my posts are completely random. You probably click on the blog link and think 'I wonder what it'll be this time - Some political rant about home education? Some funny comment about parenting (or lack of)? Or a dull list of home ed activities with some photos of kids we've never met and have no interest in whatsoever?'

Well today ladies and gentlefolk, I'm going for option C...

Here is the news:

Spring has arrived (at last)

and with it, comes that craziness that infects all who stand in the way.

Mad teacher woman with tambourine in museum reminds home ed children exactly how patronising adults can be:

(it goes without saying that I am always very very thankful when others organise home ed workshops at other locations - but there are times when the workshops serve to remind me why I home educate)

Shocking new discovery of 'hoody' mummy - freed from it's crypt it roams the museum withh unfilled-in worksheets:

Criminal mother finds exactly how quick it is between taking a photo of the stage and the theatre police tapping her on the shoulder and telling her off (approx 2 secs after this photo):

[We saw Charlie and Lola - well worth a visit if it comes to you. Lovely for littleuns. True to the original. And no silly adults in funny costumes singing stupid songs (always a sticking point for me).

Of course I'd give it a full review if the security thugs at the theatre had let me take a few more fuzzy pictures. Pah! Who do they think I am? There's this badly dressed frump of a mother who couldn't find the hairbrush, with my crappy little digital camera and 3 fidgetty kids? Like I'm going to film the whole show (in blurry wobbles with 4 heads in front of me and small child begging for jelly beans) and put it on Youtube..? Ok. Rant over. I suppose it's a fair cop, guv. I give you the full two-fingered salute.]

Child praises miracle of mother actually finishing a knitting project:

[Do they look different lengths? Nah! I reckon it's just that one leg is longer than the other.]

[Notice the non-slip rug stuff sewn underneath? No more hall floor slides for you, my child. You have super sticky feet. Ha!]

One of the family proves that they can actually do academic work without mother threatening to send them to school ('..I'm phoning St Christophers now..what d'you mean? You're willing to do it now..?')

Small child demostrates how best to drown very tiny seeds:

(and then leave them to die from lack of water later)

Middle child demonstrates at science festival how to soak stall-holder's feet with water pump (and not apologise):

Small child makes mother freeze her wotsits off for 2 hours at science festival so small child can ask stall holder 'How big is Space?'

(I wouldn't have minded but the stall holder is her dad. )

'And how big is space?' I hear you ask

VERY.

(apparently, though I couldn't hear because my teeth were chattering too much).

Big child makes lethal additions to catapult collection (hard things to fire and targets to pretend to hit while actually aiming for squirrels):

Small child finds jelly bean on floor of theatre. Museum assistants date it to sometime in the 3rd century judging by the amount of archaic fluff attached to it:

And here endeth the news.

The perils of buying cardboard model-making sets.

You'd think I'd have learnt from the James Watt Steam Engine that took us weeks to make, and the numerous cardboard model-making sets still unused on the bookcase. And the Trojan Horse model that I ordered from Amazon and immediately regretted. But no. I went and bought a telescope-making kit. It was cheap. In fact I thought it might have been mispriced.


Then I realised, as ds2 progressed, that the part labels were written in German. And that at least one of them was incorrectly labelled. We haven't got any further, but it's possible that more is mis-labelled.

So by the time we've interpreted what it is we're meant to do (each little stage requires gluing and drying before progressing to the next stage) it could be a couple of months before we are viewing the stars through our cardboard telescope.

And then we have a Trojan Horse to make. Sometime this year.

Still, we are plodding along at Ancient Greece. Not on Ancient Greece. Not in or with Ancient Greece. But at Ancient Greece. That proactive word 'at'.

I'm trying to make it as interesting and painless for the kids as possible. Ds1 and ds2 are making lapbooks/folders. We are covering small topics. Small painless topics. So far: Athens; The Parthenon; Sparta; City States/Government; Food; homes. For each we make a little booklet to stick into the folder, sometimes photocopying pictures, sometimes printing out words, sometimes doing a bit of colouring. So very painless. Theoretically.

Next I think it'll be Greek Gods (we've been listening to the first of two CDs of Greek myths) and perhaps something about architecture and writing.

Below you can see the kids importing clip art into the wordprocessing package (some of which they'd downloaded from the internet). I gave them the task of getting pictures of a list of foods that the ancient Greeks would have eaten.

And now to the very different subject. The subject of socks.

I've been very naughty and visited a wool shop. Frugal went out the window. In came greed. Not only did I buy self-patterning camouflage 4ply sock wool to make ds1 some socks, but I also bought a pattern and some cheap wool for chunky socks. Here's the first one finished, modelled on ds1's foot (he's been wearing it all afternoon). :

They dont look quite as wholesome and natural as the wool that was used in the pattern, but that wool was expensive and rather too girly (pinks and pastels) for the boys. This is courtelle yarn, which is basically a nice chunky and soft acrylic. It's really easy and quick to knit with, though it does have a mean habit of splitting into its individual strands if you're not careful.

I was a bit worried it might have really lumpy seams as it's knitted on 2 needles (makes it even quicker!) with the seam sewn up afterwards. However ds1 hasn't complained so far.

I don't know what they'd be like inside shoes, but they make great slipper socks (if a bit slippy).

Maybe I'll be able to use up some of the other chunky-thickness wools in the loft now I've got the hang of it.

Now I need to knit the second sock before he wears this one out.

Knit knit knitting along...

I feel like I should be posting up lots of pictures like usual, but to be honest we haven't done much that requires journalistic comment.

Ancient Greece is still ticking along. The kids have been listening to a CD on Ancient Greek stories - a sort of whistle-stop tour of the Greek Gods and how mean and vile they were. Those ancient Greeks were a bloodthirsty bunch weren't they? I mean Gods eating their own children, just to prevent some prophecy coming true..?! I might try that on my bunch next time they complain about having to write a sentence.!

Yesterday we had a home ed knitty day. A CHILD-FREE knitty day, for parents ONLY. A knitty day out in the country in a wonderful -if chilly - little building on an organic smallholding (I think that would be the right word?) of one of the home educating families.

I'm progressing on one of my many unfinished craft projects (currently a cotton blanket, about 7 squares in and a long long way to go). I still have 1 1/2 fingerless gloves to be completed, a tank top for me (well 1 1/2 tank top), the weird body of a crocheted loopy dog, a finished tank top which doesn't really fit and I don't know what to do with it, and some unidentified Tamagotchi (er no, Amigurumi or whatever) pink body parts (I think they may have been intended to be an easter rabbit - last Easter).

And I've just sent for some sock wool off Ebay for ds1, who has finally agreed that I can knit him something. It's a slightly horrible self-striping combination of browns and creams, but it's the one he chose and who am I to argue with a 11-yr-old? He wants socks. I wonder if a visit to a certain home -ed family may have swung his decision? He did want a camouflage-patterned complete balaclava (with just small eye and mouth holes), so I'm quite relieved that he's decided on socks instead. I just need to remember how to knit socks...