This is truly a new beginning as I have never made a blog or website before. I will share my thoughts and experiences as a teacher, a dog enthusiast, and a knitter.
I have been teaching for more than 25 years. This year, I'm teaching a grade 2 and 3 class in the afternoons. Most of the time, it's a very rewarding yet challenging career. I will share the experiences that make the job worthwhile and tickle my funny bone.
My dogs are a huge part of my life. I am currently owned by a Bichon and 3 Shelties. I train and show my dogs but I don't breed them as I have decided I am temperamentally unsuited to selling puppies. I think that the dog obsession is a genetic flaw; you either have it or you don't. When I was a child, I prayed every night for a puppy until my mother finally relented. My dad also had the dog gene and I'm sure he helped my cause. I thank my wonderful husband for his support of my hobby over the years. He even cheerfully dog sits when I go to shows!
The knitting is a new pursuit. I was looking for a way to lessen stress to help with my ongoing battle with fibromyalgia and diabetes. As I couldn't really picture myself meditating, I decided to take up knitting. I'm glad I did! I have been enjoying it to no end. I had dabbled in knitting before but my mom was a prolific knitter and when I got frustrated or bored with a project I would just it hand it to mom to finish so never really learned much. I also crochet and I used to do a lot of counted cross stitch but I'm finding the knitting much more challenging and rewarding. I'm not into the novelty yarns; I much prefer cable work. I found the FLAK project and dove in. I haven't done much of the sweater yet but I have learned so much from the FLAK yahoo group and my swatching. Knitting seems to be the perfect activity for those days when I don't have very much energy for more physical pursuits which happen more often than not this winter because of the fibromyalgia.
I live in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada in the heart of the prairies. We have had a strange winter this year. We had a few cold days at the end of November but December and January were very mild. Last week, winter hit with a vengeance as the wind chill values were close to -50 C! We were so spoiled by December and January that people were kind of wimpy about the cold and we forgot what winter usually feels like in Saskatchewan. I figure that every nice day is one less cold day that we'll have to endure this winter. At least in February the days are longer so it seems easier to deal with the cold when there's more daylight.
One of these days I will get out the camera and post some pics of my FLAK project and dig around in the computer for some dog pics too.
I'll end with one of my favorite conversations with a student recently. A boy came up to me and said, "Know what? I got lucky last night." My response to this: "You did?" "Yep," he said. "I got to go to Chuck E. Cheese."
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