Cooking and Crafting

Thank you to everyone who commented about my consignment question. I appreciate your thoughtful responses, and will have to rethink what I want to sell, as all of my knitting is indeed from patterns. So. Back to the drawing board, so to speak.






I had a lovely day Monday, at least until a headache knocked the stuffing out of me. I had pulled my May issues of Everyday Food off the shelf and took them to work so I could plan a meal or two. I decided on chicken breasts stuffed with mozzarella cheese, basil, and sundried tomatoes, (May 2006), and lemony smashed potatoes (May 2009). Plus a microwave bag of Brussels sprouts. As I was enjoying the shopping and then the cooking, the headache hit and I spent the rest of the evening with very low energy, just trying to prevent it from worsening. I took a bath, sat on the deck, drank a lot of water, took some meds, and it still hung on.

 

I have just started reading The Eyre Affair, by Jaspar Fforde, a series I had not heard of until recently. It's pretty interesting so far. Quirky, like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books. Oh, and I finished the Hitchhiker shawl, although I did indeed run out of yarn before forty two teeth. No matter, it's still a lovely piece, if I say so myself. Now I'm knitting another Honey Cowl, using some Madelinetosh Vintage I bought at WEBS, in a lovely green-gray color, while I think about my next "real" project.

 

I have read the blog whip up for quite some time and the past week or so they have been hosting a series on creativity, which led me to this article. It really relates to the gifted classes I just completed and is making me think about some of the ways I can encourage creativity in my classroom. Speaking of my classroom, I got the results back for the SOL test and 95% of my students passed. Oddly, I'm slightly disappointed that four failed, especially since three of them were within one question of a passing score. I know it's bad to focus on the failures instead of the seventy two students who passed, but that's how I work.


Speaking of teaching, this is the time of year after the test, so the pressure is off of me, but I still have a good three weeks of valuable instructional time before the end of the year. So, what does this picture have to do with teaching?

Well, these are the tools of my craft this week, as my students are using them to calculate experimental probability in a variety of ways, using activities from the fabulous Activities Intergrating Math and Science (AIMS) series. I love the activities in these books and use them a lot throughout the year, but now I can just pick the ones that look the most fun. And while they are indeed fun activities, they must be tiring me out, because I went to bed at 6:45 p.m. last night!

Hope you have an enjoyable long weekend!