Same ol'? No!

We haven't been doing so much the same thing as I've just been incredibly busy, so this blog has been ignored. But, I've finally bought yarn for the BFF cowl I'll be knitting:

I think the color is Magenta. My BFF is going to knit her parts in the Moss color. This will go quite far in the whole "wearing more color" campaign my brother has waged. I also bought more Misti Alpaca Chunky for hats.

Misti Alpaca is so soft, it always makes me happy to knit it. And this is chunky yarn, so projects go that much faster. Except for my Thorpe (or rather, DH's Thorpe). DH asked me to knit him the fair isle, patterned Thorpe. I had to fiddle with the needle sizes so many times I actually ended up knitting the hat three times. In between teasing me about the fact that it was glaringly too small ("I thought the whole point of you knitting it was that it fits perfectly!") he told me that he'd asked for that specific pattern because it looked cool and that way he'd be able to show off and tell people his wife had knit it (DH gets to go skiing next month for work, lucky man). It was an exercise in frustration, but the end result was a hat that actually fit DH. And I don't have a picture of it yet, even though it's a FO.

On a completely different note, the San Francisco Botanical Garden is beautiful. I know I look like a tourist when I traipse through there with a camera, but it's still fun.

Bub has math anxiety. I'm not sure how this happened, but it seemed to happen after he was in "school" with other kids. One of the other kids is a year older and more advanced in math, which may have made Bub feel insufficient, I don't know for sure, but now he has math anxiety that I need to combat. I've been looking into the JUMP Math program. We're actually working through the introductory units right now to figure out exactly which book to start with. Bub thinks it's so easy he's excited to use the program, which I suppose is the point, but I kind of resented the marketing of it while reading the teaching guide--to generate excitement you're supposed to praise a lot and when they succeed, tell them how advanced they are (for instance, the introduction of pre-algebra which is supposedly part of middle school math). It's not really my style. Typically, I don't praise unless I think it's worthy of praise. But like I said, marketing. I'm not in marketing, and I suppose there's a reason. But if generated enthusiasm helps Bub like math again (and judging by today, it looks like it might work), I guess I'll be cheering from the seat next to him.