Yarn Along and updates

It's been a couple weeks again since I've managed to participate in the Yarn Along with Ginny of Small Things. Come to think of it, it's been a few weeks since I've managed to even update the blog.  What can I say, things have suddenly gotten very busy around here.

I have finally made some like-minded mama friends around here which is just wonderful!  Together with them I have been very busy starting a local Waldorf Homeschool Coop we are calling Rosebud Circle.  We aren't planning on homeschooling unless we were to move somewhere without a school, but we also don't live particularly close to the nearest Waldorf school here so it's nice to have a local community closer to home.

W and I are also hoping that we will be starting the parent-child class at the nearest Waldorf School next month.  The teacher welcomed us into the class in May and I just realized last week that we hadn't heard anything since then and school starts very soon.  I'm in the process of playing phone/email tag with the school now and hope we get it all resolved soon so we can start week after next.  Our homeschool community is wonderful, but I also really feel a need to be connected to a Waldorf School as well.

I am going to be starting Waldorf Foundation Year Studies through the Sophia Institute late next month as well which is hopefully the start of an exciting new chapter in my life as well.   For some time now I have been wanting to start Waldorf teacher training but I guess it's something I haven't mentioned here previously. My intention had been to start earlier this year, but then our move came up and I had to postpone my intentions for a while.  I'm glad that we are finally settled enough for me to start down this path. I'm really looking forward to this and I think it is going to offer me great opportunities for my own personal growth and really make me stretch  in new ways.  I'm still undecided as to whether I want to pursue early childhood education or elementary education.  I had always thought I would go into elementary education, but there continues to be this little voice in my mind telling me that early childhood might be where I need to be.  I really enjoy both age groups and the curriculum is so beautiful from early childhood up through the grades.  Sometimes I think both are calling to me with equal intensity at this point.  My hope is that as I go through the foundation studies I will be better able to decide in which direction I am being called.  I am sure that by the time I need to make the decision, I will have a clearer picture of what that calling is going to be.

Okay, now to the yarn along!  I finished the first sweater I've ever completed.  It's a blue wool hoodie for W (Rav notes here).  He loves it but I have to apologize for the bad picture.  He didn't feel like being a very cooperative model.  I enjoyed knitting this one so much that when I went back to the store to get a skein of yarn to finish it, I decided I also wanted to make him a striped one which is my knitting project for this week.  I decided to knit this one in the round and work the arms from the top down (Rav notes here).  As I write this, though I'm realizing I'm going to have to go back and take a quite a few rows and start the decreases on the first sleeve.  Still, I don't think it will take me too much longer to complete it.  I'm amazed my how much more quickly it has gone knitting this sweater in the round than it did knitting it flat.

For books this week, I just completed Farmer Boy (not pictured) and The Long Winter from the Little House series.  Oh how I love these books!  I read little bits of Farmer Boy outloud to W and he loved hearing new stories about " 'Manzo" besides the ones in his My First Little House books.  It's certainly not a book I would read to him in its entirety, but I was surprised by how much he enjoyed me reading a chapter book to him.  My other book that I am currently reading in School as a journey by Torin M Finser.  I ordered a used copy of this one from Amazon and imagine my surprise when I opened it up and found that it was a signed copy!  Kind of cool!  In any case, I've read the chapters on first and second grades and I'm working my way through the 3rd grade chapter now.  It's a fantastic book and is really inspiring me right now.  

Okay, hopefully I can be back here a little more regularly in the coming weeks.  I'm also hoping to get a few minutes in the next day or so to see what all of you are working on!