Subbing Update

I thought I'd post an update on my subbing adventures.

First off, I thought I'd update the childcare issue. I ended up putting Ruby in the after school program. She likes it a lot and they like her there. She gets her homework done every day and gets a snack, and time to run around and play with her friends.

Sam just stays after school for math club, so he also gets his homework done, and that gives me about an hour and twenty minutes after he gets out to get back and pick him up. That's usually plenty of time, though there have been a couple of times when they canceled math club and he had to sit in the office and wait. The day that the teachers have staff meetings they don't have math club, so I either work half days, make arrangements for him to go home with a friend, or just don't work. Since math club is free, I can't complain too much.

Next year when he's in middle school, he'll go to their after school program, which is free, and Ruby can go to hers, which isn't.

So, our afternoons are a crazy mess of picking everyone up and dropping everyone off here and there and everywhere. It's the time of year when we have baseball, drumline, science olympiad, scouts, and piano for three different kids to shuffle around. CRA-ZY.

Back to subbing. I've started subbing for Special Day Classes and Resource classes. I like them a lot. Very small class sizes, nice kids, and at least one aide. One class I've been in three times has two aides for almost the whole day. I was worried about taking on special ed classes, thinking that I might not be able to handle all the needs of all the kids in the class. But, most of the kids that I've worked with are more along the lines of slow learners, rather than behavioral issues. Resource classes are all about keeping kids on track and making sure they're getting their work done. Kind of like being at home!

In all, it's been a positive experience and I think I'll look for more special ed classes.

Oh, and this week I interviewed with another district. They only have a limited number of positions open, and I'm sure I'm up against people with full teaching credentials (as opposed to a sub credential), who I expect will get the positions before me. I'm also overanalyzing everything I said in the interview. But I was on time, polite, made eye contact and complimented the district for the things I had heard about it (even though one of their middle schools keeps beating our drumline team for first place by fractions of points!)

And that's a little update on subbing and childcare.

Knitting Projects

I haven't posted much lately. We've been busy. Not busy doing too many things that are worth blogging about (some, though, and I'll get to them eventually), but one thing I have been doing is knitting.

If you've read my previous posts, you know that we just got four new babies in our family. I decided to get ambitious and knit sweaters for all of them. Prior to this, the most complicated thing I'd done was mittens. Flat knit mittens, not even the kind you knit in the round.

Anyway, I made some sweaters and I think they turned out quite nicely.

The first two I did were the ones for the twin boys, Calvin and Liam. Since they were twins, I expected them to come first. They didn't, they came last.

Their sweaters are both made from the same pattern using the same yarn in two different colors. They're pieced together, so I made the two front pieces, a back piece and then the sleeves and sewed them all together.

If you care, the yarn is Mission Falls 1824, it's a worsted weight superwash wool and very soft. They're knit in garter stitch. The yarn looks lighter than it actually is, it's a dark navy blue.

This is the first one:

And the second one, it's also darker than the picture, a dark teal:

Next up, is the sweater for my nephew Edmund. It's knit with KnitPicks Swish DK, a superwash wool, DK weight. For this one I learned something new: knitting a top-down raglan sleeve sweater. It's knit in stockinette, with a garter stitch button band, cuffs, hood edge and bottom edge. The sleeves I did in the round so there are no seams on this one, except at the top of the hood. The background is a chair at the yarn shop where I go to knit.

And last, but certainly not least, the cute girl sweater I knit for my niece, Ruth. She was the middle of the three births. For her sweater, I learned to knit fair isle/intarsia patterns. Ruth's sweater was also a top-down raglan sleeve with the sleeves knit in the round. The yarn is KnitPicks Shine Sport, which is a sport weight yarn. It's a Cotton/Modal blend and it's very soft and has a lovely drape. It's knit in stockinette with a Knit2/Purl2 ribbing at the neck, cuffs, button band and bottom edge. Since both the yarn and the needles were smaller for this one, it took a lot longer to make. And I had a lot of yarn left over, so I made a hat. I designed the pattern on the hat to echo, but not copy the design on the sweater.

Here's a close-up shot of the tulips on the sweater. This picture was taken before I blocked the sweater, so the stitches are kind of messy. They looked better after blocking:

One of my resolutions/goals for the year was to learn to knit socks. So I took a sock class at the yarn shop and made some socks for my sister. She likes them and they keep her feet warm in the cold New England winter. They're knit with a Dream In Color worsted weight, hand-dyed superwash wool yarn.

For her birthday, Ruby asked for some slipper socks, so I took her to the yarn shop and let her pick out her color and I knit her some slipper socks. I really like them they turned out cute. They're a dark magenta. They're done in a nylon/acrylic blend, nothing fancy. She loves them.

And then for fun one day, I threw together a couple of matching San Francisco Giants hats for my favorite little Giants fans, Liam and Calvin. These are done with bargain acrylic yarn, just for fun. They go for lots of walks, and need to keep warm on the streets of San Francisco.

Calvin was most unhappy with his hat, but Liam thought he was the bee's knees in his!

So, that's what I've been knitting lately.

A couple of definitions:

blocking-shaping the finished garment while wet

raglan sleeve-a sleeve that goes all the way to the neck with no shoulder seam

superwash wool-machine washable wool

worsted/DK/sport-yarn weights, worsted is the thickest of the three listed here, DK is thinner and sport thinner still

Today. . .

. . .it's been a year.

Double Trouble

Meet Calvin and William.

Calvin and William made their debut into the world this weekend after my sister's marathon 80+ hour labor at almost 39 weeks! Whew! Those two did NOT want to come out.

I got to be one of the first to hold them, which was one of the perks of sleeping in a lumpy pull-out chair and eating hospital food for five days! There wasn't a lot of sleep to be had over all that time, so it was a good thing they were so cute. I'm so glad I could be there, though, and my kids were good sports about getting shuffled around from house to house while I was gone.

The babies, of course, love me. And since they live pretty close, we'll get to see them grow up!

The Little Princess

This is Ruth. She's my new niece, courtesy of my sister-in-law Tirza and my brother James.

She's just too pretty, and with all her new boy cousins, I'm sure she'll be the little princess. And, lucky Ruth, she gets the little girl sweater I've been working so hard on. It's still not done, but I'm making it in a 6-9 month size so it will still fit by the time it's done. I'm a slow knitter and it uses a small needle.

Someday I'll get to meet Ruth (she lives back east), but until then I'll keep stalking the internet waiting for more pictures!

The New Man in My Life

This is Edmund. He's my new nephew and he's wonderful and adorable and I love him. I can't wait to meet him and give him big kisses on those fabulous chubby cheeks!

Welcome to the world little Edmund!

Ms. Teacher Lady

It's been two months since I posted last. Whew. Where did the time go?

I've started working as a substitute teacher in a local school district. Not the one we live in. The one we live in uses the county sub database and they haven't hired new subs in over a year. And I've been waiting for over a year for them. Then the district two towns away was hiring so I went for it.

So, when I'm not working, I'm spending waaaay too much time on the SubFinder website looking for available jobs. They go fast. And when I'm working, well, I'm working.

Blogging and baking seem to be on the back burner right now. I think eventually I'll get my act together and be able to be organized and have things go smoothly. Maybe.

For now, I'm trying to work out the whole "who's going to pick up the kids after school" thing, which I thought I had worked out with a neighbor, but their schedule after school is not as available as they led me to believe and I'm constantly having to make alternate plans.

My plan for tomorrow is trading cars with a friend so she'll have a big enough car to transport all the kids to her house.

What I need is someone who is always home after school and can handle taking my kids with little notice. Not so easy. I could put them in the after school program, but I don't work every day, and if they were in the after school program, they'd have to go every day anyway.

Aside from the childcare problem, it's going pretty well. So far all the jobs I've done have been in junior high or high school. I'd like to try some middle grades, in the 3-5th grade range. Kids that age are a little less snotty and don't try to pull as much. For some reason the high school kids thought I was stupid enough to believe that their teacher ALWAYS lets them use their ipods in class. Right. As If.

So, that's the story. My life is in a big period of change right now and I'm just trying to keep afloat some days.