This and That and Knitting, of Course

Ah what a week! It is always difficult to get back to school after a satisfying summer off. I dreaded the return, this year, as much as I do every other year. However, as soon as I walked down the hallway to sign in, it felt as though I had never left. It was good to see the people I work with, and I couldn't have said that about every job I've been at.

My class began with three students, one VERY low functioning boy, and to keep this in perspective, my kids are the lowest level students in the school to begin with. He began as very uncooperative but in one day he improved tremendously and although he can still be contrary, he will be fine. I'm excited because he is a non-reader and I have started him on the Wilson Reading method. Another young man is very young maturationally, and perhaps a bit paranoid that others are ___________ at him (looking, laughing at, staring, touching). He is sweet however, and eager to please. My third student was one I had last year, very explosive and dangerous. He has been programmed to another area for the summer, returned to my class for one day, didn't want to do any classwork and pushed the little paranoid kid down to the ground. So the explosive kid is back to the other area, for how long we shall see. So Thursday I get another student who seems to be pretty good. Well he seemed to be for about 2 hours. After that I realized that he is passive aggressive, got the paranoid kid's number right away and does anything to push his buttons. We will see how explosive he is when he continues to receive negative points, part of our behavioral system. So far, I've been soft on him but that stops Monday. It is just too exhausting to be soft. I've managed to put away school Friday when I walked out the door, that is until this post. Now it is put away again, a new school year goal.

So Friday I walked after school on the boardwalk. A storm is coming and you can tell that the sky would be changing soon. This morning my husband ran/walked in a race for 9/11 with the Marines and I ran the water stand. It was fun. We headed out east after because I wanted to stop at the Waterford outlet but alas, they are no longer there. So I ended up getting a bunch of goodies for my son's fiance's wedding shower. Ahhhhhh, check that off the list.

So finally, onto knitting. I've mentioned that I am working on the Swirl Shawl. I'm really enjoying it and even fleetingly thought about not stopping at a scarf and continuing to make it into a shawl. I'll see as I complete the scarf. Anyway, as I've developed some strategies as I previously mentioned, I posted on a forum asking for any strategies others have used. I thought that it would be helpful to have strategies in one place. The following are some hints used by Kaidy (Thanks!) (she used the Melody yarn too):

Place your marker after the first 10 stitches so you know where to start something new. All the action (the decreases) take place at the end of the pattern repeat. I found only one marker was necessary. You don't want to stop in the middle of the round anyway.

Each skein of yarn makes 17-18 hex's, the yarn did have knots and splices in it as it came off the skein. I ended up rewinding the balls--cutting where the knots appeared and keeping the little balls from each skein in order. That way when I knew that there wasn't enough yarn left to start and complete a new hex, I would just start the next ball in the sequence.

For subsequent hex's it's better to cast on, then pick up the stitches to join the hex so that you are working on the right side and in the right direction.

If you drop a stitch, especially once you start the yarnovers, it's better just to rip the whole thing out and start over --Trust me on this!!!

It is possible to go in and replace a hex in the middle of the previous row! There are ten live stitches from one of the ajoining hex's that you have to be careful to pick up, but it can be done! (More than once even when you get careless and don't pay attention to what's happening with the beginning of your cast on for the hex)

At the end, just cut the yarn and thread it through the final six stitches instead of knitting 6 together.

Always start the next hex and work the first two rounds on the 60 stitches. That was the hardest part for me and I liked to come back to the fun part, working the pattern and the decreases.

I used blocking wires for the first time ever and the shawl was easy to block. The hex's opened up very well and evenly by just pulling the wires through the outside points. There were a few points on the end hex's that had to be pinned individually, but otherwise it wasn't hard at all.

BE AWARE! The pattern is addicting and fun. Scrubbing the kitchen floor, cleaning bathrooms, making meals....not fun and addicting! Really a fun pattern that's challenging but not hard and yields spectacular results.

and she adds:

These are my thoughts on picking up and casting on after the first hex. I'm not sure that I can correctly paint a picture of what I did and what I would do differently the next time in words alone. First off, the way the actual pattern directions are written for picking up the joining stitches and then casting on felt backwards to me. This may be because I knit continental or combination most of the time or perhaps I wasn't understanding what the directions wanted me to do. Anyway, after the first row, the pattern says to start here >\_/ pick up ten stitches along each edge to form the bottom of the hex, then cast on 30 additional stitches for the top half of the hex. You would be moving in a counter clockwise direction. I started on the opposite side of the hex \_/< picked up stitches along the edge and then used the knitted cast on for the 30 stitches across the top. This kept the right or public side always on top and let me knit around the hex in a clockwise direction. The class instructor is going to have people pull out about 30 in. of yarn, cast on 30 sts using the long tail cast on which will form the top of the hex, then \_/< start here to pick up the joining stitches. I think that there are many ways to achieve the same results, so folks should go with whatever makes sense and looks correct for them.

So that's about it for me right now. It is pouring outside right now, the tropical storm working its way up the coast. Tomorrow we plan to hang out and watch football, not that I am a big football fan but entering a $10 pool makes you do stuff like this. Football and Knitting, whatta combo!

Comments

[Kelly]

It sounds like your job is both challenging and rewarding. Your kids are lucky to have such a speacial teacher.

Thanks so much for the tips on the swirl shawl. I will be starting mine over the weekend and I think these will be really helpful!

[licraftgal]

Hi Joy,
Glad to see you are still knitting up a storm. Glad work is going well too. Was starting to worry about you when there was no new posts for a long while. Take care.