Lavender Blue, Dilly Dilly

 I've made a lot of lavender sachets lately.  It started with realizing that the lavender outside is getting to the point where I could harvest it, and I still had more than a gallon of dried lavender from previous years.  And so I took the blue, pink and green scraps that seemed appropriate from Grandma and made some quickie sachets.

 Grandma also had some little elephant rectangles in her scrap bags, so I used them.

 I had a few vintage scraps of my own to use.  Just a few!  You don't need a tutorial for these, but here's the basic procedure: cut squares about 3", stich with a 1/4" seam around all 4 corners but leaving an opening of 1" or so; turn right-side out and use a wooden iron or other tool to poke the corners out; spoon dried lavender flowers into the bag, and topstitch the opening closed with a neutral thread, backtacking to secure.  It's very soothing to make something repetitive like this that requires next to no thought.

And my old alphabet skirt got cut up and I now have just about every letter of the alphabet.  These were a little smaller than 3" and so were a little harder to stuff.  And I need help with the letters in the bottom row... I, J, S, T?

Last night I took the girls to see the play, "Dear Edwina, Jr." that Tertia was almost in, but then after she started bowling she couldn't be in.  It was cute.  "If you need advice in Paw Paw, Michigan..."  Then we came home and watched the semifinals of the Spelling Bee.  It doesn't get much more Americana than that.  I really hate how they changed the rules this year though, especially when there were a handful of kids who made it through all the rounds of the semifinals but were eliminated based on scores on the written test.  And they did this on national television.  Now, I'm not a big proponent of the self-esteem trumps all philosophy, and I understand it's a competition and you have to realize that only one person can win, but I have taught middle school for 13 years.  And it's just cruel to do that to middle schoolers.

Speaking of things that are cruel to do to middle schoolers... mine are taking their 4-5 page Latin final exams today.  I will be grading for the next eon or so and blogging will have to happen when it happens.  Enjoy the virtual scent of lavender in the meantime.

Randomday, belated (also Emperor's Day)

Here are the Roman Honey Cakes I made for Emperor's Day today.  12 eggs, beaten in a stand mixer until thick, then honey (about 1 cup) drizzled in, then about 2 1/4 cups flour and some coriander.  Baked in a 350 oven for about 20 minutes.  The muffin-shaped ones have almonds on them, the square ones are plain, and the mini donut shaped ones are stuffed with dates.  They are now gone.

6th graders right before the competition began.

I teach some of the goofiest kids on the planet.

The assembled throngs of onlookers.  I provided togas for the coronation of 2 of the 4 emperors but was unable to take a picture because of scheduling issues.  Sniff.

Kathy H. has been working hard with the 5th-graders on verb forms.  They could probably beat my 8th graders at 4 principal parts.
I missed Randomday on Saturday.  I have quite a bit of random stuff saved up though, so I'm declaring belated Randomday today.

My son was in the newspaper today.  Next to the obituaries, because I think they left him out when they were doing valedictorian pictures of all the big schools yesterday.  (Kind of like that episode of the Middle where poor Sue Heck was listed in the yearbook under "in memoriam."  My life is so much like an episode of The Middle, it depresses me to watch the show). But the online version is quite nice.  And I actually took that picture of him.

I watched every televised minute of the Spelling Bee over the weekend, and wrote down all the words, because I am a total Spelling Bee geek.  Here they are:

Round 4:

• cancrivorous
• ditokous
• polyptych
• mumpsimus
• carpophore
• attermine
• ergastulum
• sylloge (that means someone went out on this word).
• pidan
• tendenz
• sciophyte
• toxophilite
• frore
• caryatid
• exergue
• douceur
• mephitis (this is an Oscan-derived word.  I can't tell you how much this excited me).
• stannum (in case you were wondering why tin has the chemical symbol it does).
• pratincolous
• bacitracin
• monocotyledon
• victorine
• cataphract
• enthymeme
• survigrous
• catallactics
• phlogistic
• tondino
• cochineal (I knew this because of my fiber arts hobby).
• pleurodynia
• podilegous
• dysthymia
• habendum (This is a gerundive!  I'm adding it to my gerundive hunt list).

Round 5

• hortulan
• psychrophyte
• compas
• Liederkranz
• lymphopoiesis
• macropodid
• cannelon
• quinquennalia
• athanor
• rhabdolith
• calo
• fjeld
• storis
• cisele
• aoristic (I love a word derived from a verb tense name!)
• oecus
• Gotterdammerung
• tocopherol
• mascalage
• schwyzer
• chamaephyte
• atopen
• perleche
• trophobiosis
• souterrain
• bombycine
• thysanopterist
• maquillage
• gimbaled
• rhipidate
• polos
• theophylline
• cabochon
• araphorostic
• resveratrol
• contrecoup
• soboliferous
• patas
• nudibranch (I was surprised to hear that the "ch" is hard, never having heard it pronounced)
• allothogenic
• Grundriss

Round 6:

• quatuor
• rhonchus
• vellon
• guilloche
• polynee
• capharnaum
• cheyney
• rapparee
• bisbigliando
• Gleichschaltung
• pejerrey
• ammocoetes
• heian
• kahikatea
• ouabain
• tirthankara
• phrontistery
• kanaima
• cholecystitis
• himation (totally knew this one too!  Greco-Roman culture again!)
• pissaladiere

Round 7 (finals)

• psammon (an E. Nesbit story helped with this one)
• dedans
• sahel
• harengiform
• canities
• ridotto
• maieutic
• turnverein
• otosteon

Round 8

• ajimez
• porwigle
• melopoeia
• phthisiology
• distelfink
• rouille
• yttriferous

Round 9

• luteovirescent (I love Latin.  It makes me feel so smart!)
• chatoyant
• ericeticolous
• quattrocento
• vetiver
• geistlich

Round 10

• saccharolytic
• prolegomenon
• schwannoma

Round 11

• admittatur (I will just say that this is one word where the English pronunciation of a word could steer you wrong, because they pronounce that second a as in "say", not "father".  We have something called the Great Vowel Shift that changed the pronunciation of vowels in English.  I was tempted to spell it "admittetur" because that would be how it would be pronounced in Latin.  But I knew it came from the verb "mitto," which is 3rd conjugation, and it was subjunctive (let him be admitted), so the weird vowel was called for.  Which is "a" for the 3rd conjugation.  So Latin teacher logic would have saved me on this word.  But the contestants probably just had studied the word from a list.)
• chionablepsia

Round 12

• arondissement (easy for someone who took college French)
• schwarmerei (German.  not so much)

and the winning word:

• guetapens (no, I hadn't heard it before)

Well, that was fun.  It's the only time of year I watch ESPN.  How about you?  Are you smarter than an 8th grader?

Steve is watching coverage of the Queen's diamond jubilee taped from BBC.  Yesterday it was the boat parade on the Thames.  Cool stuff.

On, Wisconsin!