Beautifully Ugly

I started a pair of socks for K. a few days ago with some Fortissima sock yarn that I have had stashed for at least 5 or 6 years:

Funny story about this particular sock yarn. When I originally saw it in the store the colours jumped out at me..so vibrant, so contrasting! It was like nothing I had seen previously and, because I had only been knitting bland "man-coloured" socks at this point, I had to have it. When I showed it to K. his immediate reaction was a firm "not a chance in hell!". Sadly I sighed and put it away in my sock yarn bin. After that, every couple of months or so, I would bring it out to show to him again all hopeful. Each time he gave me the same reaction and each time I would fondle it wistfully and put it away again. Then a funny thing started to happen. Slowly his reaction moved from the first "no way in hell!" to "maybe if there are no other socks available" to "its ok, but not my favorite". Last week when I was deciding what socks to cast on next the ball jumped into my hand yet again. This time I couldn't put it down. Something about it just tickled me and I immediately cast on, thinking to myself "well, too damn bad if he doesn't like it!". When he got home that night he looked at it and, as if he had never seen it before, said "I like it..is it for me?" WTF?!? I guess it (and him) needed to wait until the right time before they could come together like they were clearly destined to be!

While I have been enjoying the sock knitting I have been planning out my next sweater project. I want to do something in chunky so I think I've decided on Cosima by Berroco out of some Gedifra Living I got at a deep discount from Elann last year. I have a bag of chocolate brown and one of pinky-purple to choose from. Right now I'm leaning towards the purple (big surprise).

On the non-knitting front I'm still fighting the good fight with Eldest's school work. She is slowly coming around but there is still stuff I'm finding that she needs to get done but forgot to work on or even bring home. I was angrily going through her desk after school yesterday to find everything we need to work on over the Easter break (there's a lot) and a couple of other moms started chatting me up and told me that they have the same problems with their kids. The consensus is that it is a combination of the age of the kids and the laid-back style of the teacher. One of the moms even told me that she doesn't care what kind of mark her kid gets just so long as he passes grade 4 and gets into a new class next year! I'm not that ready to give up but it is good to know that I'm not the only one struggling with my kid. I think what bugs me the most about this whole thing is that they just do fun stuff in class and are expected to take home all the "real" work to finish. Some nights we are doing 3 hours of home work! Poor kid..she's only 9! I can only hope that all this homework will help her to be extra disciplined with her school work next year.

Well that's it for now. Happy April Fool's! And happy Easter for those who observe. I'm hoping the Easter Bunny leaves lots of candy, especially something from Purdy's..hint, hint...