Grade Six Graduation

That's Ellery, our little graduate modeling the dress and the shrug. The dress was ordered through Nordstroms (Junior dresses...clearance!) and muled here by a friend in California. Cheap and cute...I'm all about that!


The shrug is Stardust from Knitty...with a couple mods to accomodate the yarn that I subbed. I'm not completely thrilled with the results, but I did substitute a yarn that was wildly different from that called for in the pattern. I couldn't fathom wearing a mohair shrug during a humid June, so I used a cotton blend with a bit of shine. Because much of the fit of the shrug is derived from the springiness of the mohair (not so much with the cotton) I knit a larger size from the ribbed band up, to ensure that it was big enough. I think that I would prefer the garment knit as written, with a mohair blend.




Oh, Elle won an award for Language Arts. DH feels this award is a re-framing of the observation "Your Kid Talks the Most"...but hey, a plaque is a plaque!




And finally, Ellery suffering...because "Beauty IS Pain". You can never point out this correlation too early or too often.

MIA again...

Whoever said that April is the cruelest month, never had kids in elementary school. The hands-down winner for punishment meted out to mommies is June. (ok, December is pretty hectic too, but December is busy for everyone...not just the parents of medium-sized kids.)

Everything happens in June...playdays, birthdays, track and field days, Graduation (from Grade 6 no less), teacher retirements, jamborees, field trips, bbqs...you name it, we've booked it...in June.

A couple quick pics...

The monthly Youth Dance at the community centre usually hosts only students in Grades 5 through Grade 8, but since it's June and the last month of the school year, Grade 4 students were invited to attend.

Here are Clare, Ellery, Celine and Jessica all spiffed up for their big night out. Notice Ellery's mermaid hair...she was exceptionally proud of it.




I can't really criticize about hair styles...here's a photo of me in the 80's. Yeah, that's me as a blond... hey, it was the 80's...I was a hottie by the questionable standards of the day.



Clare and Gillian celebrated their 10th birthdays. Clare invited her besties to watch the new Pixar movie "UP" and then come over and eat pizza and ice cream. (For the record, Clare dislikes cake, mostly because it has icky frosting all over it. If I hadn't been there to witness it, I'd swear she wasn't mine...)

Anyway, here are the girls creating and devouring ice cream sundaes...







It's Clare's first year at her new school and I had worried about her fitting in and finding friends...but it all worked out. Clare's classmates are just lovely girls.

Knitting-wise, June is a complete disaster. I've been working on a shrug for Elle to wear over her dress for the graduation and it's seeming to take forever. Granted, I subbed out a vastly different yarn than the one called for in the pattern, so I am the author of my own misfortune...

I was knitting some peachy-pink Lily Chin Manhattan (bamboo blend) into a Debbie Bliss jacket for a baby girl gift, but I got 3/4 of the way through the project and realized that there was no way that I could consider the results gift-worthy. The yarn has a very interesting texture, but when knitted is not dissimilar to thick terrycloth and it doesn't give teeny tiny garments a pleasant drape.

Thick and thirsty is not something I associate with baby garments unless they are soakers. I frogged the whole thing and gave the yarn to one of my proteges from the Knitting Club. I've no doubt that she will tame the yarn into something gorgeous.

I will knuckle down and finish that shrug. But after that, there isn't much on the needles except a Clare sweater that has been dragging on for months and an experiental Kid Silk Haze/Stainless Steel wool scarf that I've been toying with.

Umm...Wow

Umm...Wow. Dh's Blackberry reaction to this photo. I have no idea what happened. I was grilling dinner for the girls, went back into the house to set the table and when I popped back out to check on the meat, flames were licking the outside of the bbq from underneath. The dials are melted and I had to turn off the bbq by shutting off the tank.

Well, it's a long weekend in Canada and I'm sure that many enterprising retailers are offering fabulous deals on outdoor kitchens.


Busy, busy, busy...this is a crazy time of the year...the last 6 weeks of school, so I'll try and recap what we've been doing to date!



In less incendiary news, I finished my mother's cardigan in time for her birthday on Saturday. (Happy 80th mom!) It's the Beaded Jacket from Martin Storey's "Classic Knits for Real Women" The patterns are truly classic, but I do find it a bit offputting that "Real Women" sizes (i.e. plus-sizes) begin at a 36 inch bust.

The yarn is RYC Cashsoft Aran and the buttons were saved years ago from a black wool cardigan that my mother bought me for Christmas when I was in college.


I tagged along with Clare's class on a field trip to Medieval Times!



Hey, meat you can eat with your hands...



And falcons, horses and handsome young men in costume...I've had worse field trips!


Ellery and her posse attended a "Youth Dance" at the local community centre. Her she is with Vicky and Celine channelling "Charlie's Angels"




Heading off to the ball, transportation courtesy of Jess' mom:

A quick picture of Ellery holding the banner for her Folk Dancing Team.




And finally a pretty nifty phenomenon that Clare managed to capture on film!



Hopefully an indicator of happy times ahead!

The Last Knitting Class

It was a few weeks ago, but we've been really bogged down here by nasty flu and tummy bugs, so I'm only getting around to posting now...

My fourth and final lunchtime knitting club at the local school. (Ellery is graduating to junior high next year, so I won't be back next year...sniff)

Apologies in advance for the photos, I finally remembered to bring my camera on a day when knitting club was competing with a final rehearsal for the school play, so we were missing almost half of our members! Also, since the knit club is made up of minors...I've used the "witness protection eyebars" to conceal their identities. :-)



A few highlights and lessons learned from this year's knitting club:



Fresh eyes...fresh perspective. I promised to teach Miss K how to purl stitch "next week" since she had really gotten the hang of her knit stitches. At the next class, Miss K showed me her swatch of stockingette. "Who showed you the purl stitch?" I asked. "I figured it out myself...you just knit backwards" Miss K proudly told me. She hadn't turned her knitting around and purled the stitches, but knit left to right using knit stitches. One's first instinct is to correct the twisted stitches and show Miss K how to do purl stitches "the right way", but you really have to admire the process of deconstructing and reinventing the "backward" knit stitch. Definitely an engineer in the making!

There is always one student who really takes to knitting...


This year it was Miss C. Miss C started with a scarf...which ended up being 18 inches wide and about 6 feet long and was used as a shawl and a sarong. She moved on to skinny scarves, caps and freeform wraps. She is holding her interpretation of the Gingerbread Man from "Kids Knitting" by Melanie Fallick. It's awesome. Miss C taught herself pattern reading, increasing and decreasing from the book, has enviably even tension and is wildly creative...she is awesome.

Knitting isn't just for girls...



Once they get past the temptation to use the knitting needles as weapons (a very brief incident, really...) some of the guys take to knitting too! Manly primary colours and metallic needles are absolute must-haves.


Weaving in ends isn't icky when you're learning a new skill!



Nuff said!

Tangible Proof of Learning a New Skill



Much harder to demonstrate with reading, writing and arithmetic skills, but look at what you see from your first piece of knitting. This is Miss A's first attempt at knitting. Notice at the cast on edge...there are a few missed or loose stitches, but look at how quickly her tension evens out. At the very top of her knitting she was practicing some stockingette and mock cables!


Ok, it's not technically knitting...but finger chains are pretty fun to make

Happy Easter...from the Easter Beagle

Really an Easter Retriever, but she really is a good sport isn't she?



Ellery and Clare hid eggs for Gillian (and saved a fair number of "samples" for themselves) and the girls outdid themselves creating a bunny cake this morning.


Happy Easter!

World Wide Autism Awareness Day!

Is today!



So, to celebrate WWAA Day, here's a few pictures of ChezChelle's favorite person with autism...

Gillian rolling out pie crust...



Which requires a completely different skill set than rolling out pizza crust...



The pictures were taken about 4 days apart. Notice the new Rudolph nose in the second picture. Gilly has a nasty, wet cold and is home with me today. We might bake some biscotti this afternoon, just for a change of pace.

Gillian's latest fave thing to do...blowing out candles. She calls candles "Habby Burdays"...get it?

A Sweater he will actually wear...

Recognize the fetching "Eaton's Catalog Pointing Pose" favoured by male models of the 70's.

It's Elizabeth Morrison's Adirondack Sweater. I made one for DH before and he loved it (ok, he wore it...Dh is rarely inpired to emotion by articles of clothing) but I made a tactical error in using merino wool. It pilled horribly after a few wearings and required constant shaving and grooming to look presentable. This one is made out of a coarser Galway yarn and hopefully it will hold up to more punishment.

Oh, and the work of a very bad retriever...

Divine Intervention...

Not with the knitting, although I did finish a couple things this week. Above is the Bias Shawl which is Handmaiden's suggested pattern for Silk Rumple (discontinued). It's quick, easy and the beauty of the silk doesn't need any fancier a pattern to glow.


And the Mini-Clapotis from the previous tutorial. Note the teeny amount of yarn leftover after doing the math!






About the Divine Intervention... this past week was spring break for the girls. Thursday, E and C attended a cooking class several miles away and after Gilly and I dropped them off, it seemed silly to drive home so that we could turn around and pick them up a couple hours later. Grocery shopping killed a bit of time and then we hit the mall.

Malls are often not a good place for Gillian. Ours is worse than most because it is undergoing LOUD renovations which greatly stress both Gillian and her service dog. To make matters worse (and I admit to poor planning on my part) not returning home was an impromptu decision on my part, so I hadn't brought Haley in jacket, nor had I fed Gillian breakfast. So, loud mall, hungry autistic child with sound sensitivities, no comfort dog...recipe for disaster?

We started with Mastermind Toys...a very well-stocked toy store. One of Gillian's Xmas toys was defective and I still had a store credit for her there, so we looked for a present for her. Gilly touched nearly everything in the store, but really settled on two things...A Maisy lift the flap book and a Xylophone.

Now any thinking parent would prefer a quiet book to a noisy musical instrument, so let me explain that I had purchased this identical book for Gillian twice already and each time it was "loved to death" through some aggressive "stimming". I figured that two copies was enough and because Gillian was already starting to stim on the store's copy, I took it from Boo and tucked it into my shopping bag so that we could continue shopping.

At checkout, I paid for the xylophone (and piece of candy that Boo selected) and slipped the book back to the clerk to be replaced on the shelf.



Gilly and I went out for lunch, picked up her sisters, returned home, did some cooking and dog walking...played the xylophone...until after dinner when Gilly started asking me for "book" and "maisy book". I told her we didn't have it, she lead me to our shopping bag and looked, she lead me to my purse, back out to the car, flipped the couch cushions??...no book. She had a minor meltdown over that book. She was certain that we had it with us and it was no where to be found. Not a fun evening.

Friday morning Gilly had a doctor's appointment. Dr. L is fabulous with her, patient and gentle, nonetheless, Gillian remembers that their first three visits together involved Hepatitis needles and TB tests. She is usually quite agitated in his office. Not Friday! She behaved at least as well as could be expected and was even fairly compliant with his requests for height, weight, BP and heart rate tests. A rare successful health professional visit!

On the drive home, we passed the other Toronto location of Mastermind Toys. Still giddy from our victorious appointment, I pulled in to the parking lot and Gilly and I located a copy of the Maisy flap book...on sale no less!

There had to be some help from above yesterday!