Graduation

A blur is how the last several days have been, anyway.  I can't apparently hold the camera steady at emotional moments, and there have been a lot of them.  In addition to his valedictory status, Primigenitus received the academic achievement award and some kind of award from Washington State.  I stopped trying to capture all the moments as they sped by.  Somebody will post them on Facebook or we'll eventually get copies.  Primigenitus might even let me get a copy of the text of his speech.

The choir never sounded prettier.

Pastor Bronson, previous owner of our house, came to give the commencement address at the school he helped to found more than 13 years ago.

Other people take blurry photos too.

Take two a little better.

Fortunately not all of them were blurry.

He should know everyone's very proud and happy.

Glad Grandma could be there too.

How about a photo of the photo collage?  That baby shirt was prophetic.
I remember my mother always used to cry when she said goodbye to her mother, my grandmother, after a visit as a child.  I always thought it was something strange my mother did.  Then when she dropped me off at college the first time, she started crying when she said goodbye to me.  I've never been that emotional, usually, but I'm starting to get a feeling that will change, rather too quickly for comfort, in the coming months and years.

WIP Wednesday

In the last week I finished a quilt (Framed In Quilt) and last Wednesday I blogged about my finished top for Jack's Chain.  Since then there hasn't really been a lot of time for sewing.  But I am using the extra blocks from Jack's Chain to make a baby quilt top, and I am planning a tutorial to share with blogland.  So consider this post a teaser for the tutorial, which will come out sometime in the next week, after Primigenitus' graduation (he's valedictorian, have I mentioned that at least 500 times yet?)

Short summary of needlework projects:

• Jack's Chain twin size top - finished!
• Jack's Chain baby quilt top - about 50%
• Framed In Quilt - finished!
• knitting Black Roses/ Lady MacBeth stole - about 60%
• knitting Color Affection - about 50%
• no progress on anything else needlework related
• very little progress on final grades

Enjoy checking out the other progress over at Freshly Pieced!

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!

Design Wall Monday and Stash report

Two big finishes this last week: Jack's Chain is now a top awaiting quilting, 67"x94".  I am working on a tutorial for it but that may or may not happen this week because I have a graduating senior!  But in any case, stay tuned if you want a tutorial, it will happen!  (For now I'm re-using these photos from last Wed. and Fri.)

And the "Make it Blue" Framed In quilt is finished and bound... 63"x79".  My only fabric usage this week came from the binding: about half a yard of scrappy binding.  You can see more about this quilt in Friday's entry.

Stash Report:

Fabric used this week: .5 yards for binding
Fabric used year to date: 47.3 yards
Added this week: 0 yards
Added year to date: 27.2 yards
Net used for 2012: 20.1 yards

Yarn used this week: 0 yards (working on 2 shawls)
Yarn used year to date: 2506 yards
Yarn added this week: 0 yards
Yarn added year to date: 492 yards (all handspun, not purchased)
Net used for 2012: 2014 yards

Also linking up to Design Wall Monday.

Framed In Quilt - Finished!

This is Framed In, the gateway drug that started me off in the quilt blog world.  Just a little over a year ago, I stumbled on the pattern and pretty soon, I was following lots of quilt blogs, joining quilt-alongs and linkup parties, and the madness hasn't stopped yet.  Now it's a finished quilt.  63"x79", made entirely with scraps and stash fabric according to some self-imposed guidelines.  This is a really great pattern for quick piecing and using up scraps, as long as you have plenty of solid white.

 I backed it with a vintage sheet and quilted it with an allover squiggle-loop-star pattern.  It's pretty much everything a scrappy quilt should be.  Fresh and pretty, not at all pretentious, and with lots of memories stitched in.  (Scraps from old aprons, curtains, Quarta's big-girl quilt, Tertia's Easter dress, and so on).  I'm naming this one "Make it Blue" and it's the 3rd in a series of all-scrap quilts based on the old quilter's creed, "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without."

I finished hand-stitching the binding down last night while watching the spelling bee.  I had an extra block that I cut up to make the label.  The quilting and finishing was my May UFO project for Judy L.'s challenge.  (June's will be interesting... it's a felted wool patchwork blanket made from patches of old sweaters... stay tuned.  Also stay tuned for the how-to/tutorial post on my Jack's Chain top.  I took a lot of photos for it but it will probably have to wait until after graduation and grades).

Stress, and the Non-Missing Missing Puzzle Piece

Stress.  It's everywhere.  Last 2 weeks of school stress.  Graduation stress.  Refinancing stress.  Getting the house passably clean for the appraisal stress.  Grading stress.  School activities stress.  Plus all the ordinary stress that a family of 6 normally has.  Makes a girl want to curl up on the couch with a quilt binding to sew on and watch a marathon of the spelling bee.  And maybe, eventually, get the grading done too.

I was preparing to throw out the above puzzle as part of cleaning off the round table, which tends to be a catchall for whatever the kids pick up off the chairs or kitchen table or floor but don't want to put away.  The cats perch there too.  I had finished the puzzle except for one missing piece, months ago.  Our policy is to throw out thrift store puzzles if they have missing pieces, but I left the puzzle up because I figured, the cats and kids have been messing with this table plenty, maybe it will show up.  That was back in March.  Well, I can't find where the missing puzzle piece was, because someone had found it and put it in.  That so rarely happens, I quizzed the kids about it.  "Did one of you find the puzzle piece that was missing for this puzzle?"  The closest I got was an "I might have, it's been a long time," from Secundus.  Good news, I guess!

WIP Wednesday and Yarn Along - Jack's Chain edition

Jack's Chain is a completed quilt top now!  I overcalculated the number of blocks needed and have enough extra for a small baby quilt too.

It will be interesting to figure out an appropriate quilting pattern and then the binding will be like binding a double wedding ring, but those are both in the future.  Also in the future is a big "how-to" construction post, because I kind of would like to record that for posterity.  This is an obscure pattern but it deserves more popularity.  And it totally is not that hard and doesn't require any special construction techniques other than set-in seams (and a lot of them).  There are always some spots where the points don't perfectly meet, but a good pressing makes it lie flat.

I'm working on the binding of the Framed-In quilt.  This is the first time I've used a vintage sheet for a backing and it went pretty well.  The higher thread count does mean it's a little harder to stitch down the binding.  I should probably change to a finer needle than I'm using.

In knitting, I've succumbed to the Color Affection virus going around.  I'm using various yarns that have been in my stash for awhile; both of these are reclaimed from thrift-store sweaters I unraveled, and the third color will be more of the alpaca from my Traveling Companion shawl.  Henle Latin book 1 is my reading material for the week because I am still in the midst of all the year-end craziness.  This is the text I use for 6th and 7th grade.  Final exams this week!

Projects:

Jack's Chain Quilt - finished top!

Framed In Quilt - binding

What will be my next quilt project? I'm honestly not sure.

Black Roses Stole - maybe 55% done 

knitting cotton bath rug - no progress

knitting argyle-fest - no progress

spinning - working on blue laceweight Wensleydale - Halfway through another bobbin

Linking up to Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday and Small Things for the Yarn-Along.