Summer Garden

 

 Weaving guitar straps on an inkle loom.  The patterns come from "In Celebration of Plain Weave" by Annie MacHale.  See http://aspinnerweaver.blogspot.com/ for her info.

Lace from Home

 From Louise Colgan's Wedding Lace Portfolio.  

 

Abby

 

From Bobbi Donnelly's Point Ground and Picots

#goforawalk #jacksonroad

This pandemic for me started March 16, 2020, the first day that school was closed.  This week the governor said that school won't return til next August, and it will be very different then.  Since this started, I have been taking a lot of walks on Jackson Road, my neighborhood.  At least 2 short walks with the dog, sometimes 3, and usually 1 long walk just for me every day.  It gives me time to reflect on the absurdity of life as we know it.

From Dante's Purgatorio: " Let us posit as a given: every love that's kindled in you arises necessarily.  Still, the power to constrain it lies with you.

 Catawba River in the fog

 My neighbors have a lot of flowers

 My herb garden

 Ralph, a neighbor, unfortunately moved on to the great mouse hole in the sky.

 Catawba River sunrises

I put the vegetables on the porch to cheat the deer and bunnies

Get outside everyone - go for a walk. 

The road home. 

WFH Working From Home

       Today is the sixth week of working from home because of the Coronavirus pandemic.  There's not a lot of library work for me to do, so I have been doing a lot of textile arts.  I'm knitting a double knit blanket designed by Lucy Neatby,

 I'm working on the lace for Abby's First Communion veil (supposed to be May 2 but will probably be postponed),

 Alexis and I made a bunch of face masks,

and I am learning tapestry weaving. I bought a Mirrix 16 inch Big Sister loom and a Saffron pocket loom with my stimulus funds (thank God I am a teacher and still have a job and am getting paid!)

   Last year I bought Rebecca Mezoff's Warp and Weft tapestry weaving class (part 1) but hadn't really done much with it.  She is having a drop in on You Tube every week day at 12:30 and I've been attending it since it started.  It has really inspired me.
   I have also started keeping a journal of my thoughts- but that has turned out to be pretty depressing.
Notable quotes from my journal:

Bandolini's Bullshit Asymmetry Principal:  The amount of energy required to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than the amount required to produce it.

Elizabeth Zimmerman - Knit on with confidence and hope through all crises.

John Prine - To believe in this living is just a hard way to go.

Thoreau- What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary?

Phillip Kenicott (WaPo)- The time has come for us to wear masks.  And when at last we can take the masks off, finally then we will begin to know who we are.

Rebecca Mezoff - Tapestry is a jealous medium.

Jonathan Swift- Falsehood flies and truth comes limping after.

News in Slow French - La vie, c'est les autres.

New Lace Summer 2019

Bobbi Donnelly has a new book of Tonder Lace.  Very Nice.
It has excellent instructions and patterns.

I have so many WIPs, both lacemaking and knitting, that I need to focus on!!

This is a Tonder collar that I started in a workshop with Bobbi this spring.

This is a Binch piece designed by Kumiko Nagazaki.

This is a torchon piece from Ulrike Voelcker.

How to Create a Morning News Program Using Microsoft Power Point with Mix

For many years, we aired our morning news program live through our school’s television distribution system.  With the arrival of interactive white boards, our school district quit supporting the television system, so we needed a new way to put on the news.  After much experimentation, we have found an easy and inexpensive way to produce and show our morning news.

We have five student news crews- one for each day of the week.  Each crew has four students – one to produce the script, one to handle the music, one to run the camera and an anchor.  Often, the students switch jobs, as circumstances require.  We create and film the show the day before it is aired.

The first step is to write the script.  We create a PowerPoint presentation with a welcome slide with the date, one slide for birthdays, one for the lunch menu, one for the weather, one with announcements, one for a math or spelling problem, on for the daily book talk, one for the Pledge of Allegiance, and a final slide with the morning exercises.

We have installed Mix with our PowerPoint program.  Mix allows you to record audio or video or inking onto a slide.  Using the computer’s web camera and microphone, we record the anchor reading the slides and writing out the answer to the day’s math or spelling problem.  One nice feature of Mix is that you record only one slide at a time, so that if an error is made, you only have to re-record one slide.  You can add special effects and transitions as well as web links, documents, photos and more. You can also have your principal or teachers record a slide if they want to appear on the show.  I do a daily book talk, featuring one of the titles in the library.

Our physical education teacher does an exercise or dance routine for each news show.  She chooses students from her PE class to appear on the morning show as a reward for good behavior.  She either exercises or dances with these students and we record them with a digital video camera.  We than upload that video to our school’s You Tube channel.  After uploading, we embed the You Tube link into a slide on our presentation.  This allows the teachers to link to the You Tube video so their class can participate in the exercise program every morning.

After we are finished creating the show, we use Mix to upload it to the Office Mix website.  There are different security settings so that you can limit who can watch the show and allow comments, if wanted.  Mix then provides you with a link that you can send to your teachers.  I also put that link on our school’s Facebook page so that the parents can also enjoy our morning show.  We’ve had a lot of positive community reaction to our morning news show.  The students and staff enjoy watching it every day.  The students on the news crew gain valuable experience in creating and filming a daily show, and they have a good time working together. 

Click the link below to see the show we aired on January 26, 2016. 

https://mix.office.com/watch/178srhgiyg57x

Weaving Tech into the Library

  

Tonder Bobbin Lace

  Although this blog is usually about the textiles in my life, I also have a "real" job.  I am an elementary school librarian at Great Falls Elementary, a small school in rural South Carolina.  Last year, I was selected to be a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert and my school is a Microsoft Showcase School.    This is quite an honor for me and I have been trying to include much more educational technology in my library curriculum. One of the most important skills I teach my students (ages 4 to 11) is how to find things - books, articles and facts both online and on paper.  To that end, I teach them how to use our online catalog, databases and search engines.  I am partial to Bing, because it has limited advertising and provides copyright free images.  I teach them how to use a variety of search engines - including Duck Duck Go, Dogpile and the South Carolina Virtual Library.  We also use Wolfram Alpha for the older students, especially with math and science.  Not only does it give you the answer, it shows how the answer was calculated.  I teach all of the students how to analyze what they find on the internet - Is it current? Fact or opinion? Attributed? What type of site is it? Is it trying to sell something? Is it biased?  These are life-long searching skills for all aspects of my student's lives.
     Once students locate useful information, they need a way to organize it.  As our school is moving towards a one-to-one environment and away from paper as much as possible, I have been teaching the students to use OneNote as a digital binder to keep their files, images and notes.  Its easy to use, even for very young students, and is available anywhere there is web access.  Each student and staff member has an Office 365 account, provided by the school, giving them access to a whole range of Microsoft products.  In the library we mostly use Outlook email, OneNote, PowerPoint, Word and Sway, although some of the older students also use Excel.

Weaving Tonder bobbin lace

     An important skill I recently taught all 3rd-5th graders was how to use email properly,  This fall our students started using their new email accounts and I began to receive some rather unimpressive and confusing emails from students.  I taught them how to format an email, create an informative subject heading, and proofread their message for clarity and correctness.  I had each student send me an email with a reference question they wanted answered, and chose several to answer in the next weekly class.  I pointed out what was done properly in their emails, and we collaboratively searched for the answers to their questions.
     For Thanksgiving, I had pairs of students create word clouds about what they were thankful for, using Tagul.  I had them save their clouds to OneNote and email them to their parents.  I also printed them out and used them for a bulletin board.

     I also use educational technology in my "out of school" life, especially when I teach lacemaking and knitting. I use Windows Movie Maker to edit instructional videos and I use Sway to create promotional brochures for knitting and lacemaking.  They are easy to use and don't require a lot of time invested in learning how to use the software.  I appreciate that most Microsoft products have an intuitive feel and ease of use.

Antique Irish Crochet Cuff

New Lace

This fall I attended two lace workshops in the Charlotte area.  Golden Bobbins hosted a workshop with Kumiko Nakazaki in October and a Milanese Lace workshop with Louise Colgan in November.  I haven't finished the Flanders piece I started at Kumiko's class, so no pictures yet of it.  I did however finish the Tulip I started at Louise's class.

This spring, we also had a Idrija workshop with Allie Marguccio, where I started a butterfly.  Its finally finished. 

Christmas is fast approaching, so I made an insert for my candle holder from the book "Lace for Ten Pairs" by Claire Burkhard.

And I have started an angel from "Angels in Russian Tape Lace" by Hanne Sonne..

I'm also doing a whole lot of knitting (see my Ravelry page for details).  I can't wait for Christmas!

Binche and Flanders Bobbin Lace Workshop with Kumiko Nakazaki

Hosted in Charlotte, NC by the Golden Bobbins lace guild

 Mary working on a Binche piece.

 My Flanders piece.

 Kumiko talking to Sumi.

 Myrriah designing Binche lace.

 Ann, our hostess, working on her Binche piece.

 Karen and Vickie working on Binche pieces in Ann's beautiful living room.

 Dawn, Marie and Marion working in the nice light from Lake Norman.

 Dawn and Marie.

 Dawn's Binche tulip.

 Our teacher, Kumiko Nakazaki, playing the violin during class!

 Spanish lace bobbins that Sumi bought this summer.

My Flanders piece.