Old Holey Sock Rug

So, years ago I realized that we were throwing away all of our socks that had holes in them. Hmmm, there has to be something that I could do with those socks. So instead of throwing them away, I started collecting them in a bag.

We tried a few things and nothing was really great. The socks were stashed away to think about again on another day. In the last few weeks I ran across my stash of socks and began to experiment again. I ended up with this rug!

Here is today's keeper version of my holey sock rug!

 

What I did:

1. Cut socks into strips so I had loops of socks. I found that 2-3cm worked best. I avoided the really thin areas and where there were holes. For the top ribbing, I discarded that or cut it open so it wasn't too think. (The boys helped do this while I was reading to them.)

2. Then I created yarn by connecting the loops together with a cow hitch. Make sure that you pull the knots tight. I had some colored socks and some white socks. I chose to have four white loops and then one colored loop.

3. Then I knitted with the yarn. I personally cast on 21 stitches onto size 18 needles and then did a knit, pearl, knit pearl pattern across the row and the same on the other side.

 

I ran out of my sock yarn at a pretty good size of a rug. 57x61cm.

 

What I learned:

- Lots of lint! Cutting socks creates lots of lint. Unknown how much the finished rug will still sluff. I have put in the dryer to gather some of the lint off of it.

- Different socks will react very differently and make different sized stiches. After version 1, I re-created all of my yard so different types of socks were more distributed.

- It takes lots of socks! My finished rug weighs round 2.5 pounds.

 

Version 1 - lots of size and texture variations. I did knit pearl, knit pearl on one side and pearl, knit, pearl, knit on the other side.

 

 



Life of Fred, math that is!

I'm just about ready to order a new math book for my son. I thought I would put a quick note out here to plug our favorite newest math curriculum, Life of Fred Math!

I highly recommend Life of Fred Math from Polka Dot Publishing.

In our homeschool career, we started with Miquon and really, really thought it gave my boys a great base and I learned to do mental math so much better.  We were so sad that there was only six books in the Miquon series and so I was off searching for a new curriculum. We chose Singapore at that time. Each of my children did well on the placement tests. Towards the end of Singapore, I was not really liking how they were attempting to discuss algebra, but not really teaching algebra. Before then, it was good, but nothing spectacular. (As a homeschool parent, I thought that hardest thing about Singapore was going back and forth between workbook and text book and the great differences in the amount of work per exercise and/or review.)

So I began the hunt for a new curriculum for my 11 and 9 year old boys. I had heard others talk of Life of Fred so I wanted to check it out. I asked and some friends had some books to let me see.

The first in the Elementary Series, Apples, was completely consumed within the first 24 hours by my younger son and was hungry for more! I started my older son on Fractions. And they were off.

What I love:
- All of the math is applied.
- There are not tons of problems to overwhelm (and mom to cull out)
- Tons of additional factoids to learn along the way
- My kids love it and want to do it!
- They work very independently.
- They can't wait to get to calculus to get the entire story of how Fred at 5 is a professor at KITTENS University.

Now I'm off to order Pre-Algebra with Economics.

Even if you are not a homeschool parent, these are fun books if you want to supplement some math at home!

Praise for Clictime LLC and Lego Customer Service

Today in the mail we received a small package from Clictime, LLC.

Enclosed in the envelope was a Lego Ninjago Kai ZX watch head.  To my 9 year-old, it was great excitement. For Christmas he received a Lego Ninjago Kai ZX watch from his aunt and uncle. He really loved the watch and was really, really bummed in January when a piece on the watch face broke. It didn't seem to break from mis-use which as a parent it would be used as a teaching moment. It broke during normal use.

The watch sat on my counter for I'm not sure how many weeks, and I finally called Lego to see if we could get a piece. My son was quite patient in waiting for me and probably really gave up on me. Once I finally put forth the effort, I was instructed to contact Clictime through their website as Lego does not make the watches themselves. The website form was quick and easy to complete. I'm not sure why it took me so long to do this!

Within a couple of days I received a reply saying to send them the broken piece. My son patiently waited again on mom to get it in the mail which I did finally mail it last week. Then in the mail today we received a replacement, no bill!

I appreciated the friendly customer service that I received from Lego. Clictime exceeded my expectations by replacing the part from my return! Just thought that I would use my small abilities to praise a company and not complain!

Now this is being sported on my son's arm again!

Konexi - The gravity defying word game.

We are word game people. We love a good game of Boggle, Big Boggle really and not just that little 4x4 square. OK, mostly the adults and maybe just because we are a little too competitive for the boys to join in. We have recently been playing Scramble with Friends on our phones - pretty addicting.  (If you want to play with either one of us, we are up for new challengers.)

For Christmas we received Konexi - the Premium Edition. The boys and I played it for the first time today. My younger son liked it a lot. The game combines building with letters and making words. I think he liked the building with the letters the best. We played by the rules that were in the package.

We had a pretty good time playing the game. It's a very pretty game and stores well. The letters are fun with all of their notches in them. We played about four rounds in-between some other school subjects today. The rounds were pretty short. We found the game challenging and interesting. Though, I don't see this surpassing Boggle any time soon as the word game of choice.

There is only one of each letter of the alphabet so the words that can be created are limited. At the beginning of the game, the letters are randomly placed in a circle. On your turn, you roll the dice to move the marker between two letters. You get to choose between one of the letters and add it to the existing letter structure.  It's mostly luck on what letters are added to the structure, unless you roll the option to pick any available letter. In the course of our playing, we had only one 5 letter word and lots of three letter words. We were not able to get our structures very tall so the possibility of making long words consistently seems rare. Making three and four letter words out of difficult letters may get a little tedious. (Our structures weren't as adventurous as the picture on the box and the order of our letters generally was a bit more difficult I X Z V don't make too many words, especially since the I was the first letter.)

My competitive nine year old spent a long time on his turn trying to come up with the longest word that he could and spent most of his time trying to make up words. I was getting bored waiting for him and said that he couldn't suggest a word out loud unless he could use it in a sentence. He wanted to win and so wasn't contented with a three letter word. You get one point for every letter in your word. I think it may be better to have some letters worth more points like in Scrabble. As an example, mix is worth more points than pat. When there is only one of each letter, that may not really make any sense. I have the same issue with Bananagrams too.

In summary, we will play Konexi again. I appreciate this as a thoughtful gift to a game playing family. You never know when you will find a jewel of a game though this wasn't it for us. I'll let you know if we come up with some good rules to make the game better for our family.

Did you get any new fun games?

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