Friday 14 January 2011

Lots Of Things...



Firstly, I have finished the shawl I began last January.
It has been a pleasure to knit, but lots of other knitting came along & usurped it! Once the Christmas knitting was done, I made a concerted effort to work on it & get it finished.



Our snow has all gone now, but not in our play -







Our January school has us learning about time.
Here is our blackboard (I copied this drawing from the wonderful Our Little Nature Nest



Time is a beautiful topic that we are particularly enjoying. Such a rhythmic topic, it appeals to our sense of order.
Elianna has begun a calendar & she is illustrating each month & writing a verse from The Months by Sara Coleridge


January brings the snow,
makes our feet and fingers glow.

February brings the rain,
Thaws the frozen lake again.

March brings breezes loud and shrill,
stirs the dancing daffodil.

April brings the primrose sweet,
Scatters daises at our feet.

May brings flocks of pretty lambs,
Skipping by their fleecy damns.

June brings tulips, lilies, roses,
Fills the children's hand with posies.

Hot july brings cooling showers,
Apricots and gillyflowers.

August brings the sheaves of corn,
Then the harvest home is borne.

Warm september brings the fruit,
Sportsmen then begin to shoot.

Fresh October brings the pheasents,
Then to gather nuts is pleasent.

Dull November brings the blast,
Then the leaves are whirling fast.

Chill December brings the sleet,
Blazing fire, and Christmas treat.

Another big project Elianna has begun working on is her first knitted jumper!
This has involved a lot of addition, place value work & measurement.
So far she has costed out the garment & ordered the yarn & needles that she needs. Everything arrived this morning, which is very exciting!
The next job is to dye the yarn & ball it up, all ready to knit : )
This morning we sent a while discussing colour theory & making our own colour wheels.

Elianna's Wheel



We discussed Sir Isaac Newton's classic experiment of passing daylight through a prism to break it down into it's components of Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo & Violet. We spent a lot of time talking & thinking about how different colours are different wavelengths & why we see colours as we do.
Fascinating stuff!

My girls have gone to visit Grandma this afternoon & I intend having a huge sort out of our books. I want to spend the time re-arranging them & generally tidying them up : )

Saturday 1 January 2011

Happy New Year!

We began the day slowly, getting dressed in the still darkness.
After a quick breakfast of smoothie & panettone, the girls & I headed out to the woods.

The misty, muddy morning was such a different scene from the all-white world that we walked in a few days ago.

















After our walk, we settled down to some nature sketching. Our focus today seems to have become 'fungi' : )

We had a big, hearty brunch of sausages, eggs & bacon & the girls went out to the cinema with Daddy. This left me with peaceful knitting time.
I have just purchased The Sweater Workshop What a brilliant book! This book sets out to set us knitters free from the confines of patterns - to teach us jumper construction, so we can craft our own out of any yarn we choose.
It contans a strange looking sampler to knit, that covers all the techniques that would be used in knitting a jumper. I have eagerly cast on today!

Happy knitting!