Randomday on Tuesday

Any day that begins with a 7:00 am departure time with 6 8th-grade girls in a minivan to attend a choir festival an hour's drive away is randomday by definition.  So I will treat it as such.

When you have 8th-grade girls in your car, all roads lead to Justin Bieber.

Did you know that the Terwilliger curves are hilariously funny?  Me neither.  I think it was the way they pronounced "Terwilliger," but maybe you had to be there.  Oh yes, I was there.  I don't get it.

Tertia stayed home from school today after her epic Awkward Moment yesterday.  She did not throw up again and should be able to return to school tomorrow.  Steve worked from home today so he could keep an eye on her.

One of my knitting friends last night commented that Tertia really provided a valuable service to her classmates, by probably giving them such a negative association with ... you know ... that they will stay away from ... you know ... until they are well past adolescence.  Maybe, but I do feel like we should buy a gallon of Lysol and gift it to her Health teacher.  I am grateful that Tertia does not seem to feel embarrassed at all by her ultimate awkward moment.  I would quite literally have died.

Sometimes it must be an advantage to have Down syndrome.

Tertia knows when Justin Bieber's birthday is.  She still remembers the birthdays of most of her elementary school classmates as well.

It was great to hear the choirs in Newberg.  My second drive to Newberg in 4 days.  Cedar Tree 8th grade choir did very well.  So did the other choirs.  I know the director of the Veritas choir from 15 years ago when we both were in Denver.  We were young moms together.  Now we are very busy, not-so-young moms, deeply involved in the Classical Christian school movement.

Tertia's IEP meeting was today.  Public school teachers are probably paid 8 times what I am plus benefits, but they are stretched very thin these days.  It went about as well as those things go... we heard lots of statistics about what kind of testing and what kind of accommodations and what kind of expectations for next year there are, and decided she should take art for her third elective next year.

"Sped" is apparently no longer an insulting term, just professional abbreviated jargon for Special Education.  Tertia's teacher just got her master's degree in this field.  That's probably good for a pay raise to ten times my salary.  Sigh.

I have parent-teacher conferences later on this week.  And the pretest for the final exam.  And Saturday will be extremely busy, with Daniel coming in, Secundus attending a planning meeting for a missions trip, a wedding at which Steve will be playing piano, and then possibly rushing off to a funeral for a co-worker.  So although it will be Randomday on Saturday, I will probably not be blogging then.  Enjoy your dose of random for the week.

Quilts of the Past - Amethyst Bear Paw. And the Ultimate Awkward Moment

Okay, so a last-minute change of plans for Design Wall Monday.  I'm featuring a quilt from the past, finished in 2008 I think, a collaborative effort between my Aunt Carol and me.

It happened like this:  I am at that awkward stage, finishing up the binding on one quilt and not having any other newly-started projects to showcase at this exact moment.  Then in 8th grade Latin this morning, just as I was previewing test questions for my students, my cell phone buzzed inside the purse inside my filing cabinet.  I'm kinda surprised I actually heard it, but my maternal instincts were already keyed up:  "I should probably take this," I said to my assembled class, "my daughter wasn't feeling good this morning."

Sure enough, it was Tertia's school office calling.  She had thrown up and someone needed to pick her up.  I told them I was with my class right now and could they please call my husband.  Then I returned to the altogether too-gleeful 8th grade boys: "Did she puke?!!"  Well, yes.  There followed some cheerfully delighted comments about puke and its consistency before I settled them down enough to focus on Latin for a brief time.  Very brief.

I came home to find Steve with Tertia, looking pathetic on the couch because she will miss the bowling match and she clearly doesn't feel good.  I asked her where she was when she threw up.  "The stage."  "Do you mean where you go for dance class?"  "Yes, but no dance this week.  Health."  Yes, apparently my daughter threw up right in the middle of THAT 7th grade health lecture, giving the other girls, I'm sure, a wonderful middle-school memory that will last a lifetime.  I think she may have discovered the ultimate awkward moment.

Oh well, on to more pleasant subjects.  The Bear Paw quilt was pieced by my Aunt Carol, who gave the unquilted top to me when she came to visit one year.  Why yes, my aunt does give quilts as hostess gifts, because our family is cool that way.  It sat for awhile before I was able to get up the courage to quilt it: it was before the Megaquilter when I did all my quilting on my little Viking 630.  Here's a closeup of the quilting:

Nothing like quilting feathers in purple variegated thread on a white background to conquer fear of feathers.  It was hanging for awhile but now it mostly lives on the guestroom bed.

On the stash report, I have made lots of progress using up yarn stash!  If you recall I finished this bathmat:

and these socks in the past week:

The bathmat used 8 strands at a time.  I estimated, but it used a lot of yarn. 

Stash Report:

Quilting fabric:

Fabric used this week: 1 yard for Easy Street binding

Fabric used year to date: 22 yards
Added this week: a few scraps from Grandma - not counting them!
Added year to date: 13 yards
Net used for 2013: 9 yards

Knitting yarn:

Yarn used this week: 4620 yards for the rug and the socks
Yarn used year to date: an even 5500 yards.  Wow!  I'm going to make another rug!
Yarn added this week: 0 yards
Yarn added year to date: 910 yards
Net used for 2013: 4590 yards

When I'm not working on sewing down the binding, I'm organizing my quilting stash and giving the shelves a good spring cleaning.  I may have that little task finished later in the week.