This Week

This was a good week. I finished many of the projects I had on my list this week for around the house as well as getting to finish two knitting projects and the kids were pretty cooperative about the whole thing, even when it came down to doing the harder things like working on getting our school room in shape before we officially start our next school year. Next week I'll start working the summer session in the studio and that will change our summer days a little bit.

On the Needles...

I finished the purple socks Tuesday night and last night finally finished seaming a little purple February Baby Sweater I made for Ellie before she was born. It's still a bit large on her, but will be a good little cardi for when we're in places with AC that leave her a little chilly. I'll put up a proper FO post as soon as I can get some photos of it.

I also cast on a new cardigan for Ellie that I'm kind of making up on the fly. If it works out okay I'll share here- if you never hear about it again go ahead and assume that I'd rather not talk about it.

I read...

I'm a lot farther in Game of Thrones after a long read last night, and my brother sent me a book called Ready Player One to read next.

The boys finished their first challenge for the library's summer reading program- Ender has to read for 360 minutes to earn a reward, and Ezra has to listen to 24 books to earn a reward. The rewards are paperbacks for the first 2 times they finish their goal and on the third time through their goal they can earn another paperback or a science kit. Ender is desperately eyeing the geology kit for his end prize.

Ezra and I have been plowing through picture books together. He was right on the edge of being able to choose whether he had to read for minutes like Ender does or be read to and I felt like asking him to do all of the reading himself would just be too much. I do want him to read some on his own though, so we compromise and he reads a page or so, then I read some. Sometimes he'll read a whole book on his own and we'll count that too. He's still very much trying to gain fluency and making him read that much on his own would have been really hard this year after the initial excitement wore off. 

Just Keep Spinning…

I'm planning to spend some time with the spindle this weekend (hopefully even today) to get back in shape before Tour de Fleece kicks off June 30. My goal for the tour is just to spin every day and keep gaining consistency.

Learning all the time…

One of my projects this week was to really nail down our schooling needs for the next 6 months so that I can spend time putting together our plan and order materials. I like for most of our schooling budget to go towards art supplies and real books and not curriculum unless that curriculum 100% serves our purpose and fits our learning philosophy. Now that I think I've got a good list made I'm going to sit on it for a week or so before ordering.

In the Kitchen...

We're finishing up the last of much of last summer/fall's canning work. We're down to our last jar of blackberry jam, and the strawberry canning is almost gone too. We still have a lot of sliced pears from last year, but the boys have been going through at least a jar a day over the last few weeks.

Watching (Spoiler Free, of course...)

I finally got a chance to watch through Vikings on the DVR over the last few weeks and I just didn't get into it the way I usually do with historical dramas. Tonight we're planning a trip to the theater to see Man of Steel and I'm hoping it's as good as it looks.

Garden...

Everything is looking good in the garden so far. We go out after breakfast to check on the state of our little plants and look forward to the product of our labor. My mom called me yesterday to beg me to take some of her strawberry plants off her hands so I may get a chance to do that tomorrow. We have just 3 of our own and she's hoping we'll take at least 10-15. I'm not sure I have the room for that but I'm going to go back out today to measure and see what we can do.

In Stitches...

With no baseball games this weekend I feel like all sorts of free time appeared! I'm planning to spend some time sewing tomorrow, hopefully a little skirt or two for Ellie. I'm also reading up on some tutorials about working with knits since that is one kind of sewing I'd love to do. I've always been a little afraid of it and I need to just get over it.

This weekend... 

Sewing time, birthday celebrating, and hopefully a whole lot of knitting!