Home Made Knitting Needles

It's amazingly easy for your children to make their own knitting needles.


What you need:

• 2  12"US (or approx)  1/4"US/ 5MM diameter wooden dowel.  They generally come in 24"US lengths from the hobby/hardware store or you can get these* which are already cut to the 12" length you want. 
• 2 large wooden beads with a hole large enough to fit over the dowel or one chenille stem*.
• A sturdy pencil sharpener.

Steps:

1.  If using a 24" dowel measure and mark the center point.  Adults only: using a sharp utility blade score the line and carefully cut or break in half.   Sand the cut ends until smooth.
2. Lightly sand the length your two 12" dowels with medium and light grade sandpaper until they feel smooth in your hands.   You don't want it to snag the yarn.
3. Using the pencil sharpener carefully sharpen one end of the dowel.  You want a pencil-like shape but take care not to over sharpen.  You do not want a sharp point.  If you do find the point is too sharp, sand it until safely blunt.
4. Glue wooden bead to end the of each dowel.  If using chenille stem cut a small length for each dowel, enough to wind it around three or four times tucking sharp wire ends underneath.  Glue in place.

When the glue is dry, your new needles are ready to use!


According to this chart, your finished needle size will be:

Contemporary U.S. Size	Contemporary U.K./U.S. Metric Range	European Metric Range	"Old" U.S.(Taken from a Boye Needle gauge reprinted in a 1942 publication)	U.K.
8	5 mm	5 mm	8 (standard needles)	6

Well, now that you have your needles are you left wondering what to do?  In case you are new to knitting or just rusty, this site and this site  have some good videos to get you started.



*Amazon Affiliate Link

Strawberry Pizza

Was a very long day. 


Junior had an all day migraine so we drove everywhere today.  Today was Math class and cooking class. 


Today's menu, pizza and cheesecake. The pizza was great, the cheesecake took way too long. Too many things to bake as usual. I let Junior bring home two cupcake sized cheesecakes even though we are now certain he's lactose intolerant. His stomach has had a lot to say about him having milkshakes and cheese. He even made his pizza without cheese. Though he did put a few of the sliced strawberries for the cheesecakes on the pizza. Wasn't as bad it sounds. No worse than pineapple. Ha. And the baked berries have a really interesting taste.  I would try it again.

More Cooking Tales

Inspired by another blogger, I'm posting about Junior making breakfast today. He really likes cooking and he's made eggs before so, when I half jokingly asked when he was making us scrambled eggs this morning, he jumped up to do that. I was sitting in the office adjacent the kitchen so he was able to ask "pot or skillet?" (And thankfully I was able to jump up and light the burner when he'd let gas just pour out, forgetting to turn it to the "light" setting. Eek.) 

Then he grabbed two eggs and held them in his hand as he tried to open the fridge to put the carton away and crushed one of them in his hand. Hee. This setback was fine with him: he just grabbed another egg and cracked them right in the pan. No beating and no oil or anything. Ummm. We decided at that point he was making "modified scrambled eggs." ;) But he prevailed and something like scrambled eggs was made and eaten (and a pan is still soaking in the sink).

Clearly, he just needs more practice. I'm just glad he still likes cooking and maybe he won't be as useless at cooking as I am. He does like to watch the Food Channel.

The Perils of Pudding

And this week's edition of Cooking with Kids....

Today our intrepid 11-year-old chef presents a step-by step guide to Jell-o "Instant" Pudding.

1) Have a massive chocolate craving

2) Wave the inner pack at your mom and ask how to make it.

3) get directed to the soy milk and the measuring cup

4) complain about mixing bowls being barricaded in the cupboard by dad's questionable "system"

5) complain about not being able to find the whisk and settle reluctantly for metal serving spoon

6) a)pour mix into the measuring cup and b) *then* pour it all into the mixing bowl

7)complain that it's taking more than "two minutes" to stir the lumps out

8) complain that you keep slopping pudding over the side because dad gave you a two cup bowl to stir two cups of soymilk + mix.

9) keep complaining until mom gets up and drags the only bigger mixing bowl she can find from soooo far in the back of cupboard it has to be washed first.

10) since mom is up anyway, let her finish stirring and 

11) put it in the fridge while she's at it

12) all done!


Join us next time for Making Cookies from a "Ready to Bake" Pack!

**headdesk**

Pumpkin Pancakes

We tried out this recipe in cooking class today.

For a class full of kiddies we increased the recipe to:

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 4 tablespoons sugar
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ginger
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 pinch cloves
• 2 cup 1% low-fat milk ( can be any kind)
• 12 tablespoons canned pumpkin puree
• 4 tablespoons melted butter
• 2 eggs
  
  
  The kids also made fruit salad to go with them.  Despite my dislike of pumpkin pie, I thought these were really good.

Link Post 1: Printables

I *love* printables.  Probably too much.  But I'm so unhappy with the textbooks, I've been searching them out with a vengeance.  I'm not fond of blogs that spread things everywhere, so I'll probably make this my central printables zone, updating as I find new things.  If I do make a separate post, I'll do my best to link it back to this one.



Flash cards:

• Quizlet

Worksheets

• printables4kids.com Math and puzzles for younger kids
• Dadsworksheets.com huge number of Math sheets for grade school to middle school  - linked to tricks for learning to multiplication tables page
• superteacherworksheets.com all subjects grades k-5 plus teacher tools
• freeology.com large variety, I mostly use it for the graphic organizers
• abcteach.com a variety including foreign lang and ASL, free and membership (fee) levels
• vrml.k12.la.us Huge list of graphic organizers all levels
• softschools.com/ variety

Puzzles, Quizzes, Word searches etc, generator

• puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.com  Word search
• http://www.softschools.com/math custom division sheet 
• http://worksheets.theteacherscorner.net/ all subjects lots of generators

Motor Skills

• Handwriting without Tears
• handwritingworksheets.com  make your own practice pages

Art:

• Canon Printable projects
• www.coloringcastle.com/ color pages

Other:

• incompetech.com  print specialized graph and writing paper -covered in ads so watch where you click
• Instant Display Wall headers and posters typically seen classrooms many free but not all.
• thehomeschoolmom.com Teacher resources, ad heavy
• cherylsigmon.com teacher resources
• chartjungle.com Charts
• learninga-z.com Animal trading cards

Homeschool Posts

Since I'm homeschooling now, this blog will probably change focus a bit.  I've found the internet to be such a help for all the new things I'm trying to reinvent for us, it makes sense to post what I find since I'm known for being an avid link collector.  Watch this space for more....