Thursday 1 March 2012

Baby, I want your socks

I have finished the socks!


I will be honest, one is a little bigger than the other, but (I hope) not disastrously so... They are at least one of my rare crafty type projects where they have actually turned out looking like the should do (I am scarred by years of CDT and Art at school in which nothing ever looked like it should), and I am awfully pleased with them.

Next step? To learn how to knit socks in the round so I don't have to do a lot of faffing round with the tapestry needle once I've finished them...

5 comments:

  1. Congratulations on finishing the socks and, to be honest, most people have one foot a little bigger than the other.

    So you were '....scarred by years of CDT and art at achool in which nothing ever looked like it should.'
    I wonder where you got that from?
    I used to try to spend most, preferably all, of any art lesson sharpening pencils or washing paint brushes to avoid producing anything which, I knew before I started, would never look like it should.
    Your dad was the weird boy who thought that maths was easy and art was torture.

    Congratulations on making the socks and breaking the mould!

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  2. I wonder if my thing with making stuff will turn out to be like ratios... At school, I couldn't get ratios for the life of me, and I found them a terrible struggle. Then I went away and spent years sizing recipes up and down and if I had a recipe for 2 people but wanted to serve 5, or a Nigella traybake that makes 36 cakes but there's only two of us then how much stuff do I need... All without realising that what I was doing was ratios, until I got to the spurious maths test I had to do for teaching (A at GCSE, no no, give us a level 2 numeracy, please) and found with ratios section a doddle. Similarly, at school I don't think I had a reason to do stuff. It was all very abstract and I didn't really have a lot of motivation to make a metal clamp or do something creative with an H block (I still see no reason why I needed an H block, but we had to make one). Now I have a small child and a sense that I'm neglecting him by leaving him in nursery, finally I find the impetus to make something...!

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  3. But your H block still holds open the back bedroom door.
    I love 'abstract', I can do anything in theory, it's when things get real I start to panic.
    The problem with ratios was, I suspect, created by the name - its got its own special name so it can't be as simple as merely scaling something up or, indeed, down. The language of mathematics is supposed to cut through the crap and identify the similarities in situations which superficially seem different - hence the over-arching concept of 'two-ness' superceding pair, couple, brace, etc. And yet the over-arching concept of ratio turns out to be a barrier to understanding. It's not easy being a maths teacher - rather glad I don't have to fight that one any more.

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  4. ...and I should also have said....you ' are not neglecting him by leaving him in a nursery, you are giving him an opportunity to learn to interact with his peers.'

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