Some time to post!
It’s Sunday morning, I’ve sent John and the children off to church (feeling grotty again 
– still, it gets me some “time off”
), so I can do a longer post.
Knitting: – spent an extremely frustrating couple of hours yesterday untangling the mother of all tangles from my “very exciting yarn” (still can’t say what it is – it’s for a Christmas present, and the recipient might be reading!). It’s gorgeous stuff, and the knitting itself is going fine – although there are only just enough stitches to go round the circular needle at the narrowest point – it’s been OK, but I’m very glad to be increasing again. Confession – having got an FO (the soaker pants) I immediately started 2 new projects – the Very Exciting Yarn (hereafter to be known as VEY) and my Haiku-adaptation for my god-daughter. So I’m being very bad – although I have at least cast on and done the cuff for the second sleeve of Adam’s jumper.
Cooking: – a real cop-out on Friday – Adam and I made blueberry muffins – from a gluten-free packet mix! I don’t know why I bothered (well, I do – the box was half-price in Waitrose) – they were nice, but not as nice as the orange choc-chip cakes we made the other week, and not really any less effort. But to redeem myself, I did find a tasty use for marrow – Sophie Grigson’s Buttered Marrow with Aromatics – (approx 2lb marrow for 4 people) – peel marrow and discard seeds, chop into 1 inch chunks. Butter oven-proof dish (big enough to take marrow in a single tightly packed layer – I used a lasagne dish) – put marrow in, scatter with oregano, crushed coriander seeds and black pepper. Dot with butter (should use about 2 oz in total – I used much less, it didn’t seem to be a problem) – cover with foil, stick in oven at 170C (325F?) for about 35 min, then remove foil and cook for a further 15 min. It’s amazingly forgiving – I did ours for a total of over an hour at about 190, and it didn’t seem to complain.
Just before it went in the oven – what? You mean you don’t have a giraffe on your kitchen table?
Gardening: – oh yeah, I guess there’s a garden out there somewhere – the lawn desperately needs mowing, but either it’s wet, or we’re too busy doing other things.
Mothering:- tired, tired boy yesterday – combined with a not-feeling-very-well mother, it was not a fun day Still, there were some wonderful highlights – like when Ruth was helping Daddy unload the dishwasher (a bit hairy that one – we have to make sure we get to the sharp knives first!) and Adam emptied the washing machine.
Chocolate:- we raided the children’s chocolate buttons last night – and had 3 each!!
Other thoughts:- (Women only) So I’m blobbing around, on the blob (see Daisy for a translation) and it occured to me to post about my mooncup – I’d seen them advertised in various places, but always shuddered slightly and gave them a miss, but then a friend started waxing lyrical about hers, so I thought I’d give it a go – and I’m a convert. It’s not perfect, but the problems I’ve had with it have been nothing to do with mess. (In fact I find it less messy than using tampons.) It’s usually fine, but just sometimes I don’t get it in quite the right place, so it’s not so comfortable, but that’s easily fixed. I won’t go on at great length – there’s plenty of comments on the site if anyone wants to read them. Ooh – and I also use washable san-pro – see Peeweez – I think she makes them from old pjs – they’re certainly very pretty, and perfectly comfortable.
OK – that’s quite enough of that! Men – you can open your eyes again now!
Maths teaching:- It’s one of the things I always find somewhat frustrating – if I set a class a learning styles questionnaire (this links to one of many such questionnaires), the majority of them come out as preferring to learn by doing, and taking in more information from a visual presentation than from words. But if I ask them to sketch graphs you get so many moans: “Miss I hate graphs.” “Miss I can’t do graphs.” “Miss why do we have to do this?” – These are 16 year-olds who have chosen to do maths! I love teaching graphically – there’s so much that jumps off the page at you when you look at the graph of a function that you just can’t see from the equation. Still – I did get a round of applause on Thursday when I derived the quadratic formula by completing the square.
Well this post is now more than long enough – congrats to anyone who’s made it this far – I’m going to have a bath. And then I need to do some cleaning – my parents are arriving this afternoon…
four comments:
[Don’t look men] I switched to washable san-pro (from Cuddlebabes.co.uk) a while ago after talking to my SIL. I agree – they’re so much better. Think of how much isn’t going into landfill & I also think they’re much more comfy than the disposable sort. Mine haven’t got groovy patterns though! [Men can now open eyes]Daisy () (link) - 02 October '05 - 12:22
And they’re so much cheaper – after the initial outlay they cost nothing!Anne - 02 October '05 - 12:25
whats quadratic formula?[Emma] (link) - 05 October '05 - 19:04
Hi EmmaA quadratic equation is an equation with an x-squared in it – the formula tells you what x is.
Anne
Anne - 05 October '05 - 21:47
