Randomday - Post-giveaway, Pre-Auction

Well, a big congratulations to Needle and Nest, who won my giveaway hosted by Sew Mama Sew this week.  Looking around her blog, I'm glad she won -- this is someone who knows how to appreciate scraps!  Whenever I had time this week I cut 2.5" squares and strips; some were from recent donations by my mother-in-law, and some were from my own healthy collection of scraps and vintage fabric. I saved some for my own future quilts and am happy to pass along these, along with a 1997 issue of Quiltmaker magazine and a little lavender sachet.

I had a blast reading all the comments submitted in response to my request for memories of Latin.  They ranged all over - some people wished they had taken it, some loved it and shared fond memories of their eccentric Latin teachers (what's up with all Latin teachers being eccentric anyway?  Oh well, guilty as charged), some struggled when they had it but were glad afterwards, some have only faint memories of childhood Mass in Latin, several had it but couldn't remember anything.  Commenter 101 said:

I can sing 'Oh where, Oh where has my little dog gone' in Latin. You know, for emergencies.

Commenter 128:

Oh, boy, this is the giveaway for me. I took Latin for all 4 years of high school. My Latin 4 class consisted of only me! Unfortunately, I have forgotten much of what I learned, but I remember the Latin "insults", like Tacete caudex, caprimulgus & rurus. I also committed to memory the Latin dialogue from Braveheart, "Homo endomitus est et sepidicet mendacio. Ego nunquam pronunciare mendacio, sed ego sum homo endomitus." Vini, Vidi, Vici. Alia iacta est. Oh, I could go on and on. Thanks for the giveaway!  

Commenter 137:

I was JUST thinking about Latin this morning, I kid you not. I took 3 years of Latin in highschool, belonged to the Latin club (sigh) and I still use my knowledge to figure out words I don't know the meaning of right away. Oddly enough, random congegations go through my mind also...maybe I shouldn't have admitted that :) thank you! 

And commenter 139, just to keep me humble (apparently many of my students agree with this):

Ohh Latin yeah what a wonderful way to torture children ... sorry I guess the expereince isn't far enough in the past that I have forgotten all the studying and turned it into an idealistic "no better place then highschool" experience ...  

Commenter 151:

I like the way you roll, Kathy - are we related? My best memories of HS were Latin. Learning carols in Latin and singing them in the school halls. A young card of a classmate who first told me [from the seat behind me in class] that my eyes were like limpid pools of toilet water... which of course is what any brown-eyed girl wants to hear, but he was being silly not rude. We had a lot of fun in that class, and I learned more about Enlish in there than I ever did in English class. I went on to take two more semesters of Latin in college, for fun. It wasn't nearly as much fun though - everybody was too serious. And it's not easy to find classic authors who specialized in wit and humor.  

That's why we teach it in middle school!  And we try to have fun with it.  Some weeks are better than others, but that's true of most things.

Anyway, I now have a mostly cleaned up workspace and am working on piecing string blocks with my overflowing string barrel.  There's lots more spring cleaning and organizing of the stash that could be done but I'm calling it quits for now.

I ordered Bonnie K. Hunter's String Fling as a Mother's Day treat for myself.  Steve took me to Yard-n-Garden Land as a Mother's day treat for himself, a bit more than me.  I'm letting him plant and dig in the dirt, which is what he seems to like best.  I am being lazy today and not doing much other than blogging and sewing.  I really should be grading 6th and 7th grade papers, and doing my extra Latin lessons.

And in a few hours Steve and I plan to attend Cedar Tree's Belt Buckle Ball, the school's annual fundraising auction.  My signature quilt will be in the live auction -- which automatically means we can't afford it, so that's good for the school.

I close with this little bit of random wisdom, translated into Latin:

In Mordorem non simpliciter iter facit.

State of the Cake and other family updates

Wow, this week really got away from me.  I've enjoyed participating in the Sew Mama Sew giveaway day (see previous entry for my offering) but work has been kind of stinky.  I'm glad I can live vicariously through my children and Steve will cook dinner for me on Sunday!  And tomorrow I will draw for a winner in my giveaway.

Quarta's 5th grade class did state reports yesterday.  In the spirit of Cupcake Wars and last year's Boston Tea Party project, she recreated the state of Arizona in a funfetti cake (the colorful chips in the batter are the jewels underground) with marshmallows, mini M&Ms, sourpatch kids and colored sugar.  I'm pretty impressed with the neatness of the flag and the 3-dimensional cactus and orange tree.  She did all of the mixing and decorating with no help from me.  I wasn't able to see her oral report though.  Quarta is also busily practicing for the handbell choir, which will play at graduation.

Tertia's school choir participated in a district-wide choral concert last night.  It was exciting and fun to hear, and several complete strangers congratulated her.  (For my new followers, Tertia is my 13-year-old daughter who has Down syndrome).  She has a great choir director, Mrs. Hebner, and has come a long way.  I wonder whether she'll be able to participate in choir at the High School level, but we'll see.  At the moment I am more worried about whether she'll be able to get out of bed early enough to make it to High School on time, but that's awhile down the road.  And on a somber note, I am so absolutely shocked by the news coming out of Cleveland, not far from where I grew up.  One of those poor girls was Tertia's age and kidnapped while on her way home from her 7th grade special ed class.  Just horrifying.

Secundus is singing with the choir at the Cedar Tree auction tomorrow evening.  But choir isn't really his thing -- he's looking forward to training for his first marathon this summer.  Neither Steve nor I know where he gets it from, but he's an amazing athlete.

And Daniel, all grown up and finishing his final exams for his Freshman year at Grove City, enjoyed a highlight when he participated in the All-Campus-Sing with the AEX housing group, and they won for the 7th year in a row.  We are really looking forward to seeing him in person next week! Here's the video - he's always the blondest in every group.

Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day!

It's a great time of year to be a craft blogger -- the Sew Mama Sew giveaway day has rolled around again!  It's more like a whole week of giveaways because it's so popular.  Welcome to those of you visiting and I hope you'll look around a bit.  I'm Kathy, I teach Latin at a Classical Christian School, I have 4 kids including a daughter with Down syndrome, and I knit and quilt obsessively whenever I get a chance.  I blog about all of these things and more, but probably mostly about quilting.  I especially love scrappy quilts with a lot of different fabrics.  I've been giving my stash and scraps a bit of Spring Cleaning lately and here's what I have to offer for a giveaway:

 

5 Vintage sheet fat quarters, and a stack of 2 1/2" squares for your scrappy quilting pleasure!  I keep cutting more scraps, so there are already more squares than pictured here and will probably be twice as many before I quit.  I will throw in an assortment of 2 1/2" strips and an older quilting magazine too, but they aren't selected yet... I still have more cutting to do.  The Spring Cleaning continues!

To win them, leave me a comment below and I will select a winner randomly after the giveaway closes Friday at 5:00 PST.  If you have a memory of Latin, I'd love to hear about it; otherwise you can share what kind of project you want to make next.  Please make sure you are not a no-reply blogger or else include your email in the text of your message, so I can contact you if you win!

Be sure to check out more giveaways at Sew Mama Sew!  And have fun!

 

 

Congratulations to commenter #75, Needle and Nest, who wrote: My next project will be a quilt for my son's bed. Thanks for the chance to win!

 

Contact me with your address so I can get your package off to you.

Randomday with Raccoon

Forget everything you've ever learned from Ricky, Pocahontas, or any of the children's literature offerings that glorify the cute little raccoon.  This is public enemy number one.

 Need a closer look?  There you go.  Okay, so I can understand how he might be called cute.  In a "not in my backyard" kind of way.

Steve chased him up the birch tree this morning as he was sauntering casually down the driveway.  Steve was really hoping he'd run into the street and get hit, I think.

He got nervous from all the camera activity and climbed higher.  If I had had a pellet gun I would have tried it on him.  Anybody who lives near us and wants to try for a coonskin cap, be our guest.

 Establishing shot with his approximate location outlined in red.  I guesstimate about 35 feet high.  The Japanese Cedar where he hangs out most of the time is about twice as tall as this birch.

He's not stupid.  He apparently knew my threats to chop down the tree with him in it were not sincere.  I sawed off a large dead branch from a rhododendron this week and that pretty much exhausted my woodcutting muscles for the next month.  He settled down to wait until things got quiet, and he wasn't there when I checked later on in the morning.  We've been vigilant about taking in the cat food after feeding Smudge so I don't think he'll get fat from that source, but he still has the compost pile to dig through.

 Muffball was oblivious.  The warmer weather is making her frisky and she's starting her shedding season.  This morning she ran off with a ball of yarn.

 I've been addressing the organization of scraps this week.  Here are some of the strip bins, and in front is the bin of larger small scraps.

I just finished organizing all the scraps Grandma gave us over the last several weeks.  Some of them get put in the crumbs bin for use in a future crumbs quilt.

 Most of them I have been cutting into squares...

... or bricks, to be used in future "planned scrappy" quilts.  My arm and wrists are sore from all the cutting (plus the rhododendron cutting), but it's kind of fun to have it completed this far.  I'll dig from the two messy bins pictured above to create more squares and bricks until I just can't stand it anymore, and then put away the bins for awhile to work on other projects.  But I'm enjoying the organization aspect of it.  It's time for spring cleaning!

I have plans to share some of the bounty of my scrap bins as a giveaway next week.  Check back Monday!

Gumbo Afternoon

Silva Rhetoricae made the live auction!  This means it will probably sell for more than the actual material + labor I put into it, which is nice for me and for the school.

I spent most of the afternoon chopping veggies for Gumbo Zeb.  Yesterday our first basket came from Grace's Garden, so it seemed a good time to make a big batch of the Gumbo Base for the freezer.  I follow the recipe in Crescent Dragonwagon's Dairy Hollow House Soup and Bread cookbook, which may just be my favorite cookbook of all time.  But, like my quilts, gumbo turns out to be a little improvisational.  Making gumbo is an all-afternoon job, and I'm tired and looking forward to eating it for dinner, and taking it to the fellowship meal Sunday.

 You have to do a roux.  That's the brown mixture on the left: flour and oil cooked together and stirred frequently over a medium heat until the flour browns.  It will thicken the gumbo and add a nutty, brown flavor.  On the right is a sauté of 2 1/2 bell peppers, 2 1/2 onions, and a whole bunch of celery in a whole stick of butter, with a whole bunch of chopped chives added at the end.

The cool thing about Gumbo Zeb is it uses all those greens that you are supposed to eat more of but most people don't.  I put in about 2 large bunches of mustard greens from our yard, beet tops, radish tops, Swiss chard, bok choy, spinach, and parsley from the veggie basket.  And I decided to branch out and put a small bunch of lemon balm in it, because it's a green leafy vegetable/herb, and it grows in abundance in our yard.  I did check my herb book to see if lemon balm could be toxic in larger quantities and it looks like it has been used happily for at least three thousand years with no reports of negative effects whatsoever.  So in it went.  When it was all done simmering I added the roux and the vegetable sauté and the seasoning blend -- 1/4 cup of Worcestershire sauce, 1 T of Tabasco sauce, and 8 cloves of garlic were some of the key ingredients, with spices and herbs galore and plenty of tomato sauce and tomato paste.  It fills my stockpot almost to the brim.

So for dinner I cooked a pot of rice, mixed about 4 cups of the gumbo base with equal amount of chicken stock, browned some Andouille sausage and we're good to go.  The rest of the base will cool and then be packaged up for future gumbo feasts.

Yum!

The Unbearable Lightness of Eighth Grade

Abeunt studia in mores  -- Ovid

 

I've been teaching the Middle School years of 6th - 8th grade for about 13 years now.  There may have been a few years with only 3rd-5th, but it's been mostly Middle School.  So I'm entitled to a few general observations.  Avert your eyes if you are the parent of one of the kids I am currently teaching and you have a queasy stomach.  These years are called "that awkward age" for good reason.  I promise I will not say anything negative about your darling child that would damage his or her self-esteem.  Although, I wonder how often people worry about the self-esteem of middle-school teachers.

 

6th graders have issues with maturity, with organization, and with unwanted kinesthetic and verbal activity during class.  They are the most likely group in my experience to jump up and down with undisguised glee as we chant Latin verb endings to the tune of "Yankee Doodle."  They think "Semper ubi sub ubi" is the most hilarious joke in the world.  They gasp with horrified amazement as I reveal one of the scandalous deeds of the emperor Nero.  Somewhere in the fog between 6th and 7th grade, they lose that enthusiasm.  You might never notice, because they are busy growing physically during that same time span. I'm always a little sad when they stop imitating jumping beans, but it does mean that I'll be able to follow a more extended chain of reasoning with them than previously possible.

 

7th graders are the most likely group to have academic issues for me.  Part of this is because we introduce the subjunctive mood in 7th grade, which means that for several of them there just isn't enough empty brain space to keep the indicative mood straight, AND learn new vocabulary, AND review for the quiz on Friday.  All of this, and they're exhausted from the sheer physical energy required to make it through puberty.  But despite the real difficulties of 7th grade, a lot of emotional maturity comes along during that year.  I see a decline in some of the pointless childhood meanness, a dawning realization that others have a life of their own, and a fractional bit more of what Chaucer called gentilesse,  On those points, 7th grade is a good year, but with a lot of hiccups.

 

8th graders are the ones with existential issues.  And I have to say, I never quite understood existentialism.  By this time they are nearly full-grown physically, newly aware that the opposite sex is interesting, but still years from figuring out what they are supposed to do with their lives that isn't self-serving.  It's not their fault; the whole world has been set up to serve them up to this point, and the smarter ones are starting to realize it won't always be this way, and that's scary.  I try to give them a lot of dense Latin grammar to take their minds off the angst; sometimes this has the unintended consequence of creating a completely different sort of angst.

 

Reaction to angst produces goofiness.  It's everywhere in 8th grade. There was a seemingly serious attempt to convince me this week that Julius Caesar wrote a lot of run-on sentences.  "He obviously never had Mrs. Brabec as a teacher," they said, as if that was a Q.E.D.   I'll give you the fact that those sentences were compound-complex with multiple ablative absolutes and accusative with infinitive, but they were not run-on.  And today's sentence, featuring the gerundive of a dative verb: "Hostibus omni ratione nocendum est."  It is necessary to harm the enemy in every way.  So how did we get from there to injuries caused by butter?  I really lost that thread somewhere.  Perhaps we need to channel our energies into a gerundive hunt and finding Disney Princess references in mythology stories. 

High School had a social recently.  The theme was neon bright colors.  Secundus is in the left front, adjusting his pink tie.  Former 8th graders, every one of them.  In their day, they gave me Petentibus the Gaul, the Boii and Tulingi and Latobrigi as different kinds of bugs, "Defuit Epicum - Epic Fail", and countless morbid jokes.  If they survived Middle School, so can you!

Status Updates - WIPs and UFOs

Well, April has now come and gone.  My UFO list for April was as follows:

1. Random goal (held over from March): the bowling-style knitting bag.  still not done
2. Finish the argyles, and start a pair of socks for Steve. Done
3. Finish collecting signatures on the Crumbs auction quilt, quilt it and bind it, and turn it over to the auction. Done!
4. Finish the clean-up of the sewing area.  And then we can think about the next quilt.  This is one of those jobs that will probably never be done.

Finished in April: The argyle socks, the felted blanket, the Crumbs auction quilt.  I'm pretty pleased with those.  The felted blanket was an unplanned project, and already Secundus in particular has shown great appreciation for it in late-night TV watching sessions.
And now, I need to come up with some sorta-kinda goals for May. 

1. I randomly chose #5 on  my yearlong list, - make a felted wool blanket.  Okay, I did that last month, but there's material for two more.  So it's a maybe for this month.
2. I'm keeping that knitting bag sewing project on the list because I'm stubborn.  Maybe I really need to take it off the list and give up on it, and that will spur me to actually work on it.  I dunno.
3. Quilt and bind the Orca Bay quilt.
4. Finish the current socks for Steve. (I'm only about halfway up the foot).  Maybe start a new pair of socks -- but I'm starting to experience sock fatigue.  This is the equivalent of Second Sock Syndrome, but is experienced by people who knit two socks at the same time.  It's closely related to the feeling of being marooned on Sleeve Island.
5. Finish cleaning the sewing area AT LEAST ENOUGH to be able to cut out a new project.  That means that I have to quit puttering around with organizing my scraps and put them away for a bit.  I have been cutting up a lot of scraps into squares and bricks.  Fun, but there need to be a few limits:

What with gardening season upon us and teacher burnout at its annual high, that should be enough.

Here's a little owl that Quarta made this week, with additional owls waiting to be assembled.  Aunt Carol found the instructions here.  Then she sent the kits for Quarta to assemble on the new Bernina.

Knitting is going very slowly.  This is a repeat picture, but not much more progress has been made. As mentioned above I'm getting a little burned out on socks.  This is a pretty twisted stitch pattern but my mental state might be better off with something in garter stitch right now.  Real Education by Charles Murray was a challenging book that deserves to be talked over quite thoroughly among leaders in education.  His thoughts on IQ testing and who should go to college, particularly, are very controversial but I tend to think he may be on to something.

Here's a new acquisition: my knitting buddy Joyce thought of me and passed along this 1900 edition of a Compendium of Dogmatic Theology in Latin.  The binding is falling apart and the only other language that appears in it is German (okay, there are a few Greek phrases too).

Closer examination of the title page revealed the author, H. Hurter, was a Jesuit. (The initials S.J. after the name are a giveaway).  Now, because of Henle Latin, I have a soft spot for the Jesuits.  I think they are the brain trust of the Catholic church the way Reformed theologians are the brain trust of the Protestants.  It's probably only fair to point out, as Steve does, that they were responsible for many of the abuses of the Counter-Reformation.  In any case, I had a hard time finding out where this was actually published (it's volume 2 of a 3 volume set, as it turns out).  I finally Googled "Oeniponte." Oenipons in Latin means "bridge over the Inn" or "Innsbruck."  So it was published in Innsbruck, where the University is the outgrowth of a Jesuit-founded grammar school.  The theological Latin is a little too dense for me to figure out easily.  What I'm mainly curious is, knowing the Higher Criticism that came out of Germany in that era, is this textbook a critical response to it, or part of the onslaught?