More tales of English classes.
When you were a child and it was a rainy day and the class couldn't go out for recess what did your teacher do? In sunny California there weren't too many of those days but I remember playing indoor games like 7-Up (I still can't remember how that one goes... Something about putting your head down on the desk and holding your thumb up in the air...) and Hangman. Do you remember Hangman?
A few years ago when there was a little time leftover after an English lesson I decided to teach my children Hangman.
"I am going to choose a word and put spaces on the whiteboard for each letter. I want each of you to guess a letter. If you guess a correct letter I will put it in the space. If your letter isn't in my word then it goes to the bottom and each time I will draw in another part of a little man on a little scaffold. See if you can guess the word before the little man is all drawn! (My little man had fingers and toes so that he never got hung...)
So we started the game and the kids seemed to be having fun. Except for one little girl. She got more and more restless as more and more of the little man appeared and then she started saying that she didn't like this game and wanted us to quit.
"It's okay. This little man has fingers and toes. He isn't going to get hung."
Nope. My student was standing up, hiding her eyes and covering her ears and getting very upset. Since the other kids were enjoying themselves I suggested that the little girl sit and wait in the next room which she did but by that time she was crying. The rest of the class quickly finished our game and started something else.
"Teacher, let's do it again!"
Not while I've got a child in the living room crying about the poor Hangman! Anything but Hangman!
My student was so distressed and traumatized by Hangman that she couldn't join in any more activities that day. I could just imagine her going home upset and telling her mother that the English teacher was into occult or something and was terrorizing the students with gruesome stories of dead people hanging from the rafters.
Did I do something amiss? Was it all my imagination that this was a FUN word game for elementary school students? Wasn't this part of my American education? I even went to the Internet to make sure that there really was such a game! I was beginning to doubt my memory!
That night I told Tetsu about my class and the game (he'd never heard of it) and the reaction of the little girl. And Tetsu thought I was WAY~~ out of line bringing something like that into my classroom.
"What is the MATTER with you, Tanya? Why would you want to subject little children to scaffolds and hanging people? That is so unlike you. I can't understand what you were thinking. That child has every right to be upset and you need to go and apologize to her parents as soon as possible!"
Which I did. I went to the family, explained my position and how this was an English word game in America that it could be found on practically any children's website dealing with language. Nevertheless, there was no excuse for upsetting their daughter and I hoped that the girl would return to English where I promised NEVER AGAIN to play Hangman in the classroom.
Just an example of what is and is not common sense in different cultures. When I think about it, Hangman really is a gruesome game...
I finished another block of the Bunny Hill patterns so I'm done with April (that's why there are Easter eggs). Maybe I should wait to show these on the months they are supposed to be done... Of course it would be nice to be showing a picture of a December block in July like some people can do but that may be hoping for too much.
On February 8th, women bring broken and bent needles to the shrine and place them in a block of tofu as part of a ceremony to thank the needles for their hard work. Christine sent a very interesting link if you would like to read about the custom... One sentence stood out for me...
What do you do with your needles when they break or get bent? Mine go in a piece of tinfoil to be thrown out with the "dangerous trash" once a month. Compared to most people I have a lot of unusable needles and pins. Let's see... I go through numerous hand sewing needles when I'm quilting just because they seem to bend so easily. Sometimes they remind of me of a doctor's curved suturing needle! I must credit the manufacturing companies because they can bend pretty far before they actually break! Of course a bent quilting needle doesn't make for even quilting so I end up putting another needle to work.
I felt so sorry for showing a dirty Choco on my blog that I had Tetsu give her a bath yesterday since she didn't want to be out in the cold and wind and snow anyway.
Although Choco doesn't much like water, she is now looking beautiful and smells great! Our beige dog became white! Her black spots shine! Unfortunately (or fortunately) today is a sunny day and so Choco is back outside, and probably will find some place to dig and be all dirty again in a few days...
On Saturday when I camped out in the sewing room I started quilting on the Mini-Round Robin that is in my possession this month. Oh my! Have I ever broken the rules now! I am the only machine quilter in our group. Most of the other ladies smile politely at my machine quilting (machine quilting in general) and show absolutely no interest nor attraction to this technique. All except one quilter (this month's MRR recipient!) who has given it a try but is afraid to practice on any of her quilts. If anyone in my group is going to be accepting of my machine quilting then this lady will! Go to it Tanya!
And in the evening I took a break from machine quilting to... sew. The crosswalk where I volunteer has been missing its little crosswalk flags. They are plastic and become brittle and break in the winter. Or they get blown away by the wind. Or someone deliberately comes along and breaks them. All of the above. I bought some felt and cheap yellow fabric and sewed up my own flag on Saturday. Last year I spent a lot of time and brain power to wonky piece a STOP SIGN and I carry that to and from the crosswalk every morning (it's the only quilt I own that really gets seen by the world and "works" for a living). If my new little flag is going to be subject to weather and vandals I didn't want to spend too much time or money on it and this is the result. It will get left at the crosswalk and we'll see how long it lasts. I have more felt and fabric so if I can find another pole I'll make a couple more...
"Hurry up Mom! I want to see what's out in the forest!"
See, with that black around her eyes Choco really isn't very photogenic.
Paw prints in the snow. Even cat paw prints are cuter!!
And here is a rare picture of Velvet. Look what he is sitting on. A cat hot water bottle! My friend Mrs. Nakazawa visited this week bearing gifts of pound cakes and a cat heater! This neat little gadget gets put in the microwave for 5 minutes and then slipped into a furry pouch to set in a cat box or in this case Tetsu's cat shelter. Vel likes to go out into the shelter (and freeze) but he's keeping his rear end warm.
Mi says she wants to try it too!
I always feel that my machine quilting is inferior to what I could do by hand quilting, but the many comments about a baby quilt being washed often and used regularly convinced me that this quilt should be machine quilted. I still wanted a soft feel though so I quilted the center very sparsely with a few "roses".
So another small quilt done and on to other things!
When you were a child and it was a rainy day and the class couldn't go out for recess what did your teacher do? In sunny California there weren't too many of those days but I remember playing indoor games like 7-Up (I still can't remember how that one goes... Something about putting your head down on the desk and holding your thumb up in the air...) and Hangman. Do you remember Hangman?
I spent most of Tuesday morning flag sewing 2 inch squares into nine-patches and then put it all together to make a scrappy baby quilt. There is supposed to be one more border on this but I'm leaving it as is. On the docket today is quilting.
Every single time I make a quilt I go through the agonizing process of deciding whether to quilt it by machine or by hand. I wish I could just get set a policy in my head.
