The other day I posted a little about getting my classroom ready.  I had painted wooden letters spelling the word  – READ.

I finished them off by putting them on some Memo/Photo alligator clasps.  I love how this turned out.  It’s really simple.

I have it on the window sill in my classroom.  I tried to take a picture of it, but the sun was streaming in from behind and I couldn’t get a decent shot.

Work continues in getting my classroom ready.  I am happy as a clam doing it though so I don’t consider it work at all!

It’s time to get back to my blog.  This was my longest stretch in awhile of not blogging.  It has been a busy year of student teaching, substitute teaching and then a thankfully relatively brief hunt for a job.  In the meantime, I have still been knitting and now I hope to spend some time on my blog documenting both knitting, family and some my first year of teaching.

In September I will start teaching 2nd grade, and a good portion of my summer has been and will continue to be spent preparing my classroom.  There is so much to do.  But it’s good work, and I am enjoying every minute of it.

I am also doing some knitting this summer.  I made a Gaptastic Cowl recently with just one skein of worsted Shepherd’s Wool yarn.  It’s not overly long, but I can wrap it around my neck twice.  I am almost looking forward to cold weather so that I can wear it.  (Emphasis is on the almost looking forward to cold weather.)

I also have a bunch of cotton that I wanted to knit so I’ve been working on a market bag.  The pattern is called Ilene Bag.  It’s been great fun to knit.  I liked knitting the rectangular bottom and then picking up stitches to knit the side.  I kinda had it in my mind though that it was going to be a quick knit, but it seems like it is taking forever.  I have been working on the strap for what seems like weeks, and I still don’t think it’s quite long enough.

The bag is a combination of about 4 skeins of leftover cotton, but I am liking the look of it.

Part of the fun of getting ready for school is the opportunity to make stuff.  For example last weekend, I made some name sticks.  I have a teacher friend who used these and I just really liked them and decided to make my own for my class.

Now I just need to add the student names.

Davey and I painted some READ letters yesterday.  I like getting him involved, and he likes being involved.

I think I am going to put these on alligator photo clips and put them in my reading nook that I am slowly trying to create.

Next on the list, I want to get David back to school with me.  I have some plans for my walls, and he’s agreed to help me make some big ole posters.  I will look forward to sharing those as well!

I have started knitting a cowl in herringbone stitch.  It’s a free pattern from Purl Soho called “Big Herringbone Cowl“.

I am knitting with Malabrigo which is such fun.  It’s such a soft wool, and the colors are always so rich and beautiful.

Herringbone is such a neat stitch, but it feels like one step forward two steps back with each stitch.  It’s not quite that extreme, but each stitch is knit together and then half of the stitch is placed back on the left needle.  This is what creates that great herringbone stitch, but it is hard to get into a smooth knitting rhythm (at least for me!).

It’s going to be such a nice soft warm cowl though!  I can’t wait to see how it turns out.

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I am back to reading the Newbery books.  I’d read 1922 – 1931 with the exception of just a couple over the summer.  Then school started and I didn’t have much time for reading anymore.

I have a new plan though.  I have printed out a pdf of all the award winners from the beginning to the present.  Instead of going through year by year though, this time I am going to pick and choose until I hopefully have them all read.  I also am looking for books that I can check out for my kindle from the library.  I still don’t have a ton of reading time, so I am not wanting to interlibrary loan too many right now.  I will feel too much pressure to get to them.   And I don’t want to feel pressure.  For that reason, if I start a book and it’s just not my kind of book or I really don’t like it, I can stop reading it.  I won’t march through just for the sake of reading it.  This happened to me several times in the books of the 1920s.  There were some beautiful and great books, but there were some really dry ones too that I just didn’t get into.  I said good-bye to those.

It’s very satisfying to check books off a list as I read them.  As I look at the list though, I am thinking using a highlighter might even be more satisfying.

I just started the 1998 Newbery Medal winner Out of the Dust.  It is written in free verse, and it’s just a beautifully written story about the Dust Bowl.  The story is very historically accurate (at least based on what I have read about the Dust Bowl).  It’s so interesting and so darn sad.  At first, I thought I’d like to read this with Davey, but about 1/3 into the book, I have changed my mind on that.  At least not until he gets a little older.  It’s really bleak, but this was quite a bleak time.

It’s amazing what I have learned and experienced so far reading these Newbery books, and I’ve only really just begun.

I haven’t had a chance to write in almost three months.  I started student teaching, and it’s been a busy time.  It’s been a really good busy time though.

Today I am sitting outside enjoying the fall afternoon.  Ellensburg is just incredible in the fall.  It’s my favorite season even though it does mean winter will be here soon, and that’s not my favorite.   So we’ve been getting outside as much as possible.

I’ve not been knitting or writing about knitting as much as I’d like either.  However, I did finish some really cool socks just in time for the fair in Septembe.  They were a request from my cousin and they were just a lot of fun to make.

The pattern is called Anelmaiset, and it’s so versatile.  I was able to make this from my yarn stash which admittedly has gotten a little big so I had some choices.  I used worsted weight yarn, and I had a great time trying to figure out what colors to use.  I really like colorwork, and these knit up pretty fast considering that they are knee socks!

I got to experience a new stitch which I think is just called “flowers in a row”.  I had to follow a video on youtube to do the stitch, and I had to watch it really closely.  It was a little tricky for me at first, but fun to learn a new stitch.   I think the video I referred to was: Flowers in a Row.  You can kinda see the stitch in this picture.  It’s the flowery section between the two sections of bright pink.

I wasn’t sure about the ribbon, but I am glad I made the spaces for a ribbon to be threaded through because I think this could be very helpful on a knee sock.  No one likes a saggy knee sock.

These would definitely be fun to make again, but for now I need to finish some really cool cabled Christmas stockings for a friend.  The 4th one is almost complete, and then I am looking forward to blogging about them.  So for now,  I will sit outside, and enjoy the day while I knit.

This book was just delightful.  Nah-Tee, the main character, is a Native American girl who lives in a pueblo in the Southwest.  She is very brave and she meets an also brave friend named Moyo. Nah-tee has become separated from her family, and this book is about their search to find them.

I like how Grace Moon writes.  For example, Nahtee describes riding through the loneliness of the desert:  “This was a jolly loneliness – it was a sparkly daytime loneliness, and there wasn’t a fear thought hiding away anywhere.  Somehow, there was a smile in everything.”

There is some language in a few places that would be considered insensitive in today’s world.  But Nah-tee and Moyo are portrayed as such heroic children who work together to complete their quest, and overall I believe it’s a positive portrayal of independent Native American children.  This is one of my favorites so far (I think I say this a lot!).

Our friend James died Friday.   My brother, sister and I really considered James to be more like an uncle.  He and his wife Peggy lived across the street from us our entire childhood.  We always referred to them as “PeggynJames”.   We knew they were always across the street (dirt road) if we ever needed them.  James spent a lot of time with my dad over the years.  They often helped each other on different projects they had going.  I always enjoyed going to their house to visit.  Peggy taught me to crochet and helped me discover my love of all things fiber related.

James was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer about two weeks ago. He went right into hospice care, and he died at home on Friday afternoon.

I am so thankful that we got to spend time with them this past summer.  We went to their house one afternoon for lunch.  We arrived, and it was like no time at all had passed since we’d last seen them.  I loved that Peggy put me to work in the kitchen helping her finish lunch (and it was a great lunch!), and David and James got a chance to talk.  I am glad that Davey got to see him and that he will have some memories of him.  I sure didn’t anticipate that this would be the last time we saw him.

James loved games.  He’d construct these fun little games made out of wooden or metal pieces.  They were like the intertwined kind that you’d have to figure out how to take apart.  When we visited this summer, he showed Davey a paper airplane launcher he had.  Davey thought this was great fun.  He always had something interesting to show us or something interesting that he was working on.

He had a great sense of humor too.  He always made us laugh, and he had a great laugh himself.

For example, when we visited in July, he told us that he had a guard dog:

I started writing this on Friday, the day James died, but I couldn’t decide just what I wanted to say, how I wanted to say it, or if I could say anything at all.  I decided though that I did want to write about James.  I will have this written to share with Davey someday, because I’d like to remember James with Davey.  James was the definition of a good neighbor and good friend.  Yesterday Peggy told my sister that “James was at peace with himself.  That’s one reason he was able to accept his untimely diagnosis and impending death”. Karen added that “we can all strive to live a life so we are at peace with ourselves when we die”.   That made a great impact on me, and that’s a life I want for myself and for Davey (and I wish that for everyone).

We will sure miss James though.

(I borrowed this picture from my Uncle Mike Pantelogianis. Thank you Mike.)