Friday, August 22, 2008

Ramblings

School has started and I feel like I’m finally settling into the routine. The routine of working late, bringing work home at night, and going in on the weekends! Arghh!! Actually, I won’t complain, because I think I have a pretty good class this year. My class last year was, well, shall we say, challenging? Not that I don’t have my challenges this year. (one with turrets, one with epilepsy, almost 1/2 my class reading below grade level, a couple reading at first grade level (I teach fifth) and I already had one parent pull their child out of my class because I tried to teach her how to hold her pencil correctly.

Back to school night was last night and I had a pretty good turn out. It seems like I have some really nice and supportive parents this year. I also got to see a few students and parents from last year which was nice. Usually, I don’t see my students again because they go to another school after they leave fifth grade.


On the sewing front, things have been kind of quiet. I have been working on my free-motion quilting, and although this has hundreds of mistakes (no, I’m not exaggerating) I still think it looks pretty good (you know what they say - ignorance is bliss)








I stopped at the quilt shop on my way home today and picked up this pretty panel. Not sure what I’ll do with it yet, but I they had one made up in there and I liked it. Then I went to JoAnns and bout 1/4 yard of 8 different flannel fabrics to cut up into white-board erasers for my students.
Yesterday I got an email from a lady at my church who does a lot of sewing. She is having a sewing day at her house and asked me if I’d like to come. What, pass up an excuse to sew??? I think not! Yes, I’m sorry DH, but that cleaning up in the garage will have to wait for another weekend! ( we don’t let him clean in the garage unsupervised - he throws everything away. It’s an ugly site when I have to go pulling my things OUT of the dumpster! - and yes, we have a dumpster in front of our house right now. This is like putting a big juicy steak in front of a dog with a fence in between. DH is dying to throw away anything he can get his hands on!) Anyway, I’m going to the sewing day tomorrow, but I have to make sure my machine is working well first. I ‘ve been having a lot of problems with it lately and have been using my friend, Sandy’s machine. I think mine is working fine for regular sewing now. It’s just that every time I drop the feed dogs, it won’t pick up the bobbin thread. I can’t figure it out. I’ll be working on my 1945 jacket this weekend - when I’m not perusing Science curriculum or grading papers.






And, I had a nice package in the mail when I got home. I had ordered fabrics from sewingstudio.com and they arrived today. Most are knits. The ivory is a stretch crepe and the pink floral is a rayon crinkle. Everything else is some kind of knit. I think I need to have a cutting day and cut out a bunch of knit tops. Knits are so fast to sew together that if I had some cut out I could really get a lot done.

4 comments:

Chicago Sarah said...

The free form quilting looks great! :)

Anonymous said...

A parent that pulls a student for being taught correctly? I'm telling ya - and anyone who'll listen - its what's wrong with the system! Big hugs to you! I love teachers! You're so underappreciated but you're my heroes!

Anonymous said...

Well I think your free motion stitching looks good. It's something I'd like to learn to do someday. As I understand it, it just takes practice.

And gosh! half the class at such a low reading level? Has to make teaching very challenging! My hat is off to you, but I AM curious as to why that would be. Are you teaching in a low income area, are there a lot of non-English speaking people, am I just naive as to how prevalent this is? I still have two in school, and don't THINK that anything approaching that has occured at my girls' public schools.

Nancy Winningham said...

Yes, it's sad and frustrating. My school does have a large low socio-economic population and I have 7 out of my 30 who are still designated as English Learners. about 2/3 of my class qualify for Free lunch. I would guess that less than 1/4 of my student have parents with a college degree. Yet, they expect us to do so much... don't get me started ;-)