I am pretty much at the halfway point piecing the top of Abby's quilt. I promise, I'll post pictures, but I want to wait until it's done, or at least, until the top is done. Friday, I went to the Stitchin' Post. That was so awesome! Really nice material. I got two pieces, 1 1/2 yards each, to make a vanne, a Provencal-style whole cloth quilt. I need to find a solid color for the border, but I have the center panels, for when I'm ready to start. I also scoped out the Dr. Seuss fabric for the next baby quilt I'm going to make. This is for Neale's friend Dave and his wife Claire and their baby. Normally, I don't make quilts for people who aren't related to me, but Dave and Neale go WAY back, and he asked. I think I'm going to make it a little narrower than crib size, so I can use one piece of the Dr. Seuss fabric for the backing. That will still make it 40 inches by 60.

I don't know why I'm on such a quilting kick lately, but I keep seeing things I want to make. I'll probably start a knitting project, too, just to have something more portable to do. Probably either a bunny or a ball.

I think I've found a long-term career goal, too. I think I want to start my own school. Really, what I want to do is come up with the philosophy, and then be allowed to teach, but we'll see. I think a hybrid Montessori school is the way to go. There are some great things about Montessori, and really, mainstream education is starting to integrate the big ones: multi-age classrooms, and organizing classrooms into centers, so students have some time to move around the room and work independently. I'd even use some of the Montessori materials, particularly for math and the Time Line of Life, because I think that's just an amazing work. However, there are a lot of things about Montessori that are stuck. The reading curriculum, in particular, could use some re-working. Putting such a huge emphasis on phonics doesn't really work with English, anyway, especially since I knew so many children who learned words from environmental print before they mastered enough letters to build words phonetically, and they didn't have the patience to labor over phonics. Not that phonics isn't important, it is, but one thing I learned from the literacy classes I took is that English can't be taught exclusively with phonics or whole-language.

What I have in mind is a school where students would be in multi-age classrooms, set up in centers, with one teacher per grade level, and possibly and aid. Teachers would give lessons to groups of students, and in between times, students would have assignments to complete at centers. A lot of the morning would be reading/writing workshop, and students would do math, science, language arts, and social studies every day, but there would be more independent work, and more opportunities for students to learn to manage their time. It would follow the American Pediatric Association's guidelines for activity by having half an hour of P.E. every day and two 15-minute recesses. I have no idea how, or if I could make this happen, but I feel like I have a direction now.

My snowday accomplishments so far have been: I finished reading "21 Balloons" and I finished the sweater! It would have been really nice to have had the completed sweater to wear this week, since it's a bamboo/wool blend, but maybe I'll get to wear it once or twice before next year. Regardless, I plan to wear the hell out of that sweater next winter!

I'm making progress on the baby quilt, but once I figured out I had about 4 inches to go to finish the sleeve on my sweater, I concentrated on that, and now I'm done!

Of course, I'm going to try to finish the quilt pretty quickly, but I need a new knitting project. I've still got fingerless gloves to work on. I've been wanting to try toys, though. I got the supplies to knit little cotton bunnies, I may start a bunny.

AHHHHH! Overload!!!

I'm working on Abby's quilt. I just got a really cute idea. I'm going to machine quilt the centers, but I'm thinking now, I may hand-quilt the border. I was going to applique bees onto the corner blocks, because the middle is all hexagons, I've kind of got the whole beehive/honeycomb thing going. Now, though, I think I'm going to quilt bees into the corner blocks and do a couple of loopy lines through the border, like the path of a flying bee, and spell out "Abby" in cursive in the middle. I think that would be cool.

Went to Barnes & Noble this afternoon, and a copy of "Sew Beautiful" decided it needed to come home with me. I was helpless to resist the children in white clothes with pin tucks and embroidery and lace insertion. Then, when I got it home and started looking at it, there's a whole little set for a baby done in boutis, which is the Marseilles-style corded quilting that I am currently in love with. The baby bonnet pattern is free, and there's information to order the patterns for the jacket, booties, mittens, petasson (lap cover) and baby bottle cover. There are also kits. Can I just say, I want.

I think I want to try a wholecloth linen quilt for Kingdom A&S. I may not make it, but I think I want to do a four-panel Tristan quilt-style hanging. I just need to find a story and figure out how to tell it in four panels. I'm kind of thinking a unicorn story. Unicorn with a maiden, then the unicorn being hunted, then captured in a fence, then the unicorn free again. I can use the climbing rose pattern from the Tristan quilt around the edges, and separate the panels with fleurs-de-lis and seashells. Maybe. First, though, I have baby projects and a sweater to finish.

Candlelight Camp is over. The event itself went really smoothly, and sort of assuaged my SCA burnout a little. It was really nice to see people pull together to make the event happen. That tendency has been sadly lacking.

So now, I have about half a dozen projects that I want to do, like now. I have some beautiful royal blue wool that was going to be an overdress, but I didn't get to make it, but it would have been way too warm to wear anyway. I now have at least 3 new outfits I want to make. Plus, I want to make a quilt for myself. I want to make a wholecloth one, I'm thinking for Kingdom A&S. This will require more research. I still really want to make a quilted bodice and skirt, which will also require more research, and probably more hours of work than is sane.

I'm kind of thinking I want to make myself a quilt based on Japanese designs. There are a couple of patterns of hexagons and triangles in Japanese Quilt Blocks that I like. One is called "bamboo basket" and the other is a turtle variation. I'm thinking of doing one of those on a large scale, and incorporate sashiko-style designs in the corners and along the border. I may end up working on two simultaneously. Should be interesting. Provided I can keep tendinitis at bay.

The holidays are over. I didn't quite finish the fingerless gloves I was working on. I am almost finished with the sweater, I just have one more sleeve. I started cutting out pieces for my niece's baby quilt. Then, I hurt my right arm. It appears to be tendinitis, so I've been resting my arm. Hopefully, I'll be able to get back to things soon.

In the meantime, I've been thinking about a feast. No, I don't want to cook one. I just haven't seen any feasts that have impressed me lately, and I was thinking about what I'd do. I'm thinking an early spring feast, French/Italian.

first course (because "remove" isn't period)
Green Poree - a light soup of chard, herbs, and broth
meatballs
bread with butter

second course
roast chicken
turnips with cheese
apple custard tart

third course
lamb casserole - chunks of lamb slow-cooked in broth
cheese gnocchi
asparagus with saffron

fourth course
torta bianca - cheesecake
wafers
confits - candied fennel seeds

Wow, I didn't realize it had been THAT long since I posted, but I've been busy. Work and school have kind of kept me busy. It's done, though, finally! I took the final for the second literacy class tonight, and I'm done! For now...

In order to get a state teaching certificate, I have two choices: non-traditional licensure, or a Master of Arts in teaching. If I go NTLP, I probably have to find a new job, because my school doesn't meet their accreditation standards. I found out today from a co-worker who's in the MAT program at UALR that if I go that route, what I thought would be an advantage is actually very much a drawback. It would cost significantly more money, significantly more interference with my life, since probably 3-4 nights a week, I'd get home at 9 or 10, not to mention homework. The major advantage (I thought) would be that I'd get to stay where I am, but I wouldn't, and in the semester I'd be interning, I wouldn't be paid. With NTLP, it's two 3-week summer sessions and 7 Saturday workshops, one a month from September to April. I know there's homework, but at least I'd have the evenings to do it. Plus, I'd be working full-time at a starting teacher's salary, and qualify for benefits. So now, I think I'm going to hold off on more school. Maybe in a few years, I'll decide I want to go to school and add a certification, be a counselor, or a reading specialist, or something.

So, crafty stuff, I'm almost finished with the February Lady Sweater. The body is finished, I'm working on the first sleeve. That took about 3 tries. and I'm still not sure I got it right. The biggest problem was that I was doing what you normally do knitting stockinette stitch in the round, I knitted the even rows. Well, that was twisting the yarn-overs in such a way that instead of making a hole, the yarn pulled across the hole filled the space, and you couldn't see them. So now I know, when knitting lace in stockinette stitch in the round, knit all the stitches on the even rows, but PURL the yarn-overs.

I've also started another quilt. It's for my grandfather for Christmas. It's very simple. There's this silly old song he used to sing all the time when I was little. The center of the quilt is a plain navy square, and I'm quilting the words on it in white thread. The border is big squares of several different fabrics. It's basically navy, tan, green, and a dark red. Lots of earth tones and, oddly, a couple of butterfly prints, but very naturalistic, not cutesy. I found this great fabric, it's a maroon with a pattern of white dots that looks like Japanese sashiko. I'm trying really hard to finish the center by hand, but, depending on how long it takes to do the middle, I'm quite likely to finish it on the machine. After the middle is done, the rest is going to be very simple quilting on the border, either quilting in the ditch, or an off-set grid, so I'm basically sewing through the middle of each square, but in the ditch would probably be better. Then, I just finish trimming the batting, roll the edge of the backing over the front, and sew it down. That, my knitting, and a new outfit for Candlelight Camp are the big projects I've got lined up. I have some wool flannel, and I want to make a slightly looser cotehardie to wear over a dark red kirtle. I cut out a dark green kirtle a few months ago, and I should probably finish sewing that one first. So, there you go.

Wow, I didn't realize it had been over a month since I posted anything.

The quilt is done! I delivered it Tuesday. I held it up for Hunter to see, and she hugged it. It was the cutest thing ever!

I'm working on knitting the February Lady Sweater. That's pretty much it. The coif pattern order was delayed by Pennsic, but I should be getting it soon.