Nikki's Notebook

Chris’s sweater almost complete!

nikkinbird — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 01:04:47 +0000

I’m getting closer to done on Chris’s sweater. I shouldn’t really say “almost complete”, because the sleeves will take longer than they seem like they would. Here he is trying it on yesterday after I bound off on the bottom. We determined, however, that it was just a couple inches too short, so I had to rip back and am currently knitting a couple more inches before beginning the ribbing again. It may seem demoralizing to have to rip out hours’ worth of work and start over, but this is a fact of life for a knitter. Or at least, I’ve accepted that it is, and the acceptance has made my knitting life better. Yes, it may suck, but it’s nothing to get upset about. If anything, I’m just getting even more enjoyment out of my yarn. $50 in wool yarn (and that’s inexpensive as far as nice wool goes) keeping me entertained for well over 50 hours seems like a good investment to me.

(Yes, we still have our Christmas tree up. We got it late, and we never got to actually putting decorations on it because we were so busy, so we’re enjoying the cheerful lights a little while longer. I suppose February might have to be the cutoff huh?)

To rip back, I used the needles to pick up one leg of each stitch around the sweater (see below). Then, with the needles in place where I wanted them, all I had to do was rip, rip, rip! I didn’t have to worry about how far I was going, or catching the live stitches with the needles again. It just stopped unraveling when it got to the needles Well, I shouldn’t make it sound so simple. There were a couple of spots where I picked up a stitch from the wrong row, and the yarn stopped unraveling even though there were still live stitches that needed to be pulled back. I got it with some shifting of stitches back and forth on the needles, though. I’m excited to start the sleeves, and equally excited to know that, despite the initial length, the sweater seems to be the right size. Now I just have to find out where I have my size 6 double pointed needles for the sleeves.

Project details:
Pattern: Incredible Custom-fit Raglan Sweater
Yarn: Ella Rae Classic Heathers
Needles: Size 6

Rough draft complete! Look!

nikkinbird — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 21:08:36 +0000

Last night I spent most of the night doing this:

Why I chose to take this long and torturous approach to making flashcards, I’m not sure, except that the answers show through the printer paper, and I couldn’t find the printable sheet of double sided flashcards I’d used at the beginning of the year. These will be very pretty, at least. I still have to laminate them, too. Whew.

But on to the real subject of this post, look!

Look at that stack of paper!

Look at it again! Now in its pretty binder.

It’s my finished rough draft of my novel. It even has an ending that makes some kind of sense. Even though it’s only a rough draft, and far from finished, it’s still a finished novel! This is a first for me. I’ve started stories before, and I’ve done NaNoWriMo before and made it to 50,000 words, but I’d never actually finished the story. I’m excited to revise it, and fix everything that needs fixing, but for now I’m going to follow the oft-repeated advice of taking a break between drafts. Have a nice rest, novel!

p.s. I forgot to mention that I printed them double sided. So, if you think about it, it’s actually double that amount of pages. Just sayin’.

Another ice photo

nikkinbird — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 03:47:08 +0000

I forgot one! There were a few photos still hanging out on my phone that I hadn’t uploaded to flickr yet when I posted. The flickr iPhone app has two steps that require me to click before they upload, and I forgot to tap the button the second time. This photo is a closer version of the waterfall in the first picture in my previous post.

Cool ice on Tischer Creek

nikkinbird — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 02:32:40 +0000

I haven’t walked on the trail near our house for awhile because of how icy it’s been. The weather keeps alternating between warm and cold, causing lots of thick, smooth ice everywhere. Today, I walked down the hill on the roads, and came back up on the trail. It’s harder to slip when you’re walking up a hill than down, so I wasn’t as afraid to bring the dog that way!

I took some iPhone pictures of the cool ice over the creek. You can hear the water running under it. This is the section of trail alongside Tischer creek between 4th street going up to St. Marie St/Vermilion Rd.

Being busy and making kids cry

nikkinbird — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 01:58:01 +0000

Today was just one of those days. In the two separate half hour chunks of time I had to get things done, I couldn’t do it all, and felt pulled in so many different directions. Then I finally reached the home stretch. I prepared little baggies of goldfish for afterschool classes. I checked in all the kids for Homework Club, then marched them up to my room instead of the Library, because I’d forgotten that a staff meeting was using it today. Finally, to top it all off, I made two kids cry during homework club, one of whom was still crying when his mom came to pick him up. I felt horrible. And I still have about 5 different things I’d like to have done by tomorrow, which I’m not going to do tonight because my head feels like it’s going to explode.

On top of that, the Destination Imagination tournament is coming up fast (on March 10) and in trying to schedule extra meeting times for the teams, I’m seeing just how few calendar weeks are left for these kids to work on their projects, which they’ve barely started. I also had hoped that none of my teams would make it to the state tournament, because the fees get expensive. I found out, though, that one of the teams is almost guaranteed to go to state, because they are the only elementary team to pick the challenge category they’re in! So they are competing against noone and will advance by default!

Here is a picture that I like:

NaNoWriMo-ing with kids

nikkinbird — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:31:09 +0000

Today afterschool classes started back up again, and I had a new batch of Novel Writers. I had a couple of returning students, who took my NaNoWriMo class last session, and a few new ones. What I loved about teaching this afterschool class was that I got a group of kids who were already excited to write. It wasn’t really very hard to build on that. And it’s the same this time.

I brought up the topic of building a writing habit, and they jumped all over it, defining “habit,” mentioning that you can have good habits and bad habits, and then describing what it might look like to have a writing habit. A couple of them seemed to have a pretty good plan for when they could fit writing into their daily life. Whether or not they do it if I don’t decide to bribe them with candy in exchange for pages written, time will tell.

I also love doing NaNoWriMo style writing with kids because it’s all about them, and what they want to write. A girl raised her hand and asked, “Do we have to write cursive?” then sighed in relief when I told her she could write however she wanted. We’ll get to the revisions, but for now they just need a story to work on.

We played a game that I learned this weekend at the Destination Imagination theater workshop. I’m not sure if it’s actually called this, but I called it “Yes! and…” It’s a cooperative story game where one person says a statement, then the next person says, “Yes! and…” and adds their own statement, going on around the circle like this. I like it because by having to say “yes!” you are automatically reaffirming the previous persons’ idea, essentially forced to take the wacky story in stride, and then you add something of your own. The kids begged me not to stop after we’d gone around the circle a few times and it was time to talk about something else.

Best part? I was totally swamped and discombobulated today, and hadn’t planned the class at all. I was totally winging it. Apparently kids who sign up for a class called “Novel Writing” aren’t the type of kids to cause much trouble

Coffee shop morning

nikkinbird — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 16:34:50 +0000

Bagels for breakfast at Bixby’s, a little work sending some emails, and London research! Also some knitting, of course.

Trying out WordPress for iPad

nikkinbird — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 05:22:53 +0000

Chris got an iPad from Max, his office ate and friend, and now I am playing with it in bed, because I was about to go to sleep and realized I had not blogged yet today. We got some really good news today: Chris’s mom is paying for a studio in London for us over the school break in late February! We already knew she was going to help us with plane tickets, and were trying to find a way to afford the rest. Now we know we can go for sure! So exciting! I didn’t remember to blog because I was falling asleep while we looked over possible places to stay.

So excited!!

Room with a view.

nikkinbird — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 01:35:08 +0000

The view outside of my “office,” the classroom I share with 3 other people. I’m sure there are offices with more glamorous views of Lake Superior, but I’ve always wanted a view!

Aaand, sweater:

Afterschool classes starting again…

nikkinbird — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 03:14:27 +0000

And, it’s here again. A new session of afterschool classes. I’m getting tired of the spell check telling me afterschool is wrong, by the way. I know the rule. It should probably be after-school, but that gets tedious, and if words are in usage for awhile, the hyphen eventually gets eliminated. Since I’ve already seen publications use afterschool instead of after-school, I’m doing it too. It just feels wrong every time I do it! All I know for sure is, it’s not after school, because it’s an adjective. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m fairly certain about this.

My afterschool program starts up again next week. That means I’m receiving signup forms, processing those, and sending home signup confirmations while at the same time I’m still training volunteers, and even recruiting volunteers. Tonight I had to bring home work in the form of handouts for my trainings tomorrow night and Thursday, and also afterschool signup sheets so that I could enter all the student info into an excel spreadsheet. And I still need to get those confirmations home.

Something I am excited about:

Supplies for our Destination Imagination meeting tomorrow. I bought a bunch of craft sticks and am going to let the kids practice gluing them and making a structure. The wood is probably too heavy to actually be used for their structure, but I think these kids will need practice building a structure that stands up, let alone one that holds weight. I love giving kids hands-on activities, because then I just get to sit back and watch the magic happen.