The Knitted Cast-On

So today I went to buy the yarn for my class. We glued the clay balls on to the dowels, sharpened (you can just use a regular pencil sharpener for this), sanded, and polished them (I prefer Clapham's Beeswax Salad Bowl Finish) and the children are SO excited to begin to knit. I brought in wool and cotton yarns day, so they could feel the difference, as well as my wool carders for those who had not yet had a chance to try their hand at them, and some thick 'n' thin spun yarn so they could see how spinning with different tensions gives a different result. One child tried just twisting the wool "fluff" around her finger and then pulling on it to see how much stronger it was -- she was amazed! By the way, the boiling thing worked great for the polymer clay. The only downside is that some of the colors bumped into each other in the turbulent water and left some little colored marks -- nothing serious but you wouldn't want to spend hours on an elaborate sculpture and have that happen. I put them in a large stockpot (for crafts only) and filled it halfway with water, set it on the stove, set the timer for 20 minutes, and turned the heat up to High. The water probably spent 15 minutes getting hot and 5 boiling. Then when the timer dinged I took it off the heat and let it cool down with the balls still in the water, then turned them on to a paper towel to dry and they were nicely hardened. Easy as pie.

Back to the yarn story. I purchased twelve 100 gram balls in a variety of colors (but none too dark, makes it harder to see what you're doing) and tomorrow will lay them out in a beautiful rainbow. The lady at the wool store offered a wonderful suggestion -- since I don't know if every child will really "take" to it and want to do a large project I don't need to give them a large amount of yarn to start. (She said she always gives her beginners acrylic but I insisted on a Natural Fiber to protect the integrity of the History of Clothing.) And so we will wind the wool skeins into balls, the children working in partners, and they will weigh the two balls on the balance to make sure they are the same amount. Isn't that a lovely idea? And a nice way to both keep my budget to a reasonable amount and bring some authentic math work into the project.

In other news, I have no other news. Except that someone donated a carnivorous plant kit to my classroom and I am super-excited about it... always wanted to try one! And one of my fellow teachers found this lovely learning material about how different insects eat and what human object or tool best matches the action of their mouths... for example,

Pliers
Syringe
Straw
Drill
Party Blower
Nail Clippers


So we can use this material to introduce it. We want the children to match the diagram of the insect head to the tool (we would prefer to have actual tools but they might be cards with pictures of the tools) and then match the head to the body to see what animal it is. Then we can ask, is it only animals eating plants or can it be the other way round?????

:-)


Oh, I almost forgot. I named this post the knitted cast-on because when I was at the yarn store, Nancy Donley told me that when she teaches new knitters she doesn't teach them the cast on method I was taught (or, rather, taught myself) but she teaches them a simpler way, the knitted cast-on. This way, she went on, they already know the knit stitch and they are good to go. And it keeps the tension more even. It is also easier. So she taught it to me and now I will attempt to explain it.

Make a slip knot, stick the left-hand needle into it, put the right hand needle into the slip knot (your first stitch) and proceed to knit a stitch in the usual way except when you pull the loop towards you (and usually would slip your yarn off the left hand needle) you take that loop that is coming right towards your belly button and pop it onto the left hand needle, above the slip knot stitch. Voila! You have created a stitch. Then stick your right hand needle into your newly formed stitch and repeat, until you have cast on the desired number of stitches.