Enrich the Kids

Enrich the Kids is an awesome program for students to go to after school. They get a chance to take a bunch of different enrichment classes, work on homework and play outside.
The classes that I am offering are Kids with Yarn (a knitting/ crafts with yarn class), Multicultural Crafts and Drawing. This session there are only 5 weeks. That means there is only one week left. Waaahhh! Then I won't get to see my wonderful kids. Boo.

Here is the weekly lineup for each class

Drawing:
1: Perspective
2: Textures
3: Shapes in 3-D
4: Still-life
5: Mini-booklet and Life Drawing (no nekked people, k?)

Knitting
1: Fingerknitting
2. Spoolknitting
3: Pom-pom chickies, and we got to see some day-old live chickies too.
4: Loom knitting
5: Hand knitting (regular knitting)

Multicultural Crafts
1: Native Latin American
2: Carnival
3: Africa
4: Australia
5: Asia

And on the graduate school front...... FINALS are DONE!!! boo-ya!
So tired... must go and clean.
Only 6 days til Thailand.

ETA:
You may also be wondering if I have finished any new knitting projects, and well, I have but it can't be shown on here because it is for a certain Mom in my life. And even though I finished the project weeks ago. I have failed miserably in sending it out. I know, worst daughter ever.
No I take that back, just terribly busy daugther how took the time to make her awesome Mama a project out of a ton of purple lace weigth Merino/tencel yarn. And it only took me a couple of weeks, yeah, I the knitting bomb.

I am almost finished with another large project that should be blocked and photographed before the flight westward.
Cheers.

Isn't it amazing?

Bisquick now makes Gluten Free mixes. Alright the masses may not be super excited, but I am. Ana found this at the commissary. Isn't it a great find?

I did make pancakes last night, just not with this mix because I already have one open. Pancakes with banana and fresh raspberries for the win!

What's been going on?

What has been going on you might ask, as I haven't updated in over a month.
Well, there's school, school, school... and oh, look at that more school.

In graduate school we just finished midterms. They went well for me. And we are now on Spring Break. In Elementary schools, all the kids are sick and ready for the week off. Seriously, herding cats into bags would be easier somedays.

Besides papers, observations, presentations and such, I finished my shawl.
Pattern: Whippoorwill
Yarn: Fresh from the Cauldron's Elena on Silk Sock (pinks)
Regia Black Sock Yarn
Start to Finish: About a month.

What a lovely sideways picture. That's how it is going to stay because I've fixed it a bunch already, not doing it again. Just tilt your head to the left.... that's it. Super easy. Thanks for playing along.

Yesterday the fabulous Miss Penny and I went for a car ride. She loves car rides. She sticks her nose out the window and sniffs and barks at other dogs, some people, and horses. Apparently those four legged beauties are just too big for her liking. And the main event of the day, was an ice cream stop at Caliche's.

When we got home is ran around outside and then flopped on the bed.

You might notice a few things on the bed in the background...




Her treasures and bones. Penny has, count 'em, 6 milkbones. She has a tendency to horde them, which is better than burying them for weeks and then digging them up and they are all half decayed and nasty.

And my car. It is a Toyota Carolla, or however you spell it. I have finally given a name to this baby. May I present Dean, a beautiful dark emerald green that runs wonderfully, drinks oil like a fish dirinking

water, (we're working on the AA meetings for Dean, k?) and surprisingly good sound system and aircon. He got a bath last week so I should show you him all sparkly, but I'll include a before picture now and an after picture at a later time.

Snow Day, New Mexico Style

When I got up on Wednesday morning, it had snowed. I was excited. I'm one of those people that loves snow. I think that if it is cold, it should snow, otherwise it doesn't need to be cold. Schools around Las Cruces, Elementary schools up all the way to the Universities, have been closed since Wednesday. Because we got snow... here's what it looked like from my door.

And another view from my door, just rotated.

And a view towards the city and the mountains, which you can't see.

And people were FREAKING out, because apparently this never happens. Here on the mesa we got about .5 inches (1.5 cms), but in town they got 2.5 in(6.5cms), and life shut down. Everything was closed down. And there were rolling black outs because El Paso electric's generators froze, yeah, they are made to withstand 115 degrees F, not single digits.

And these pictures because my brothers wanted to see Oma Ana and her fire over the last weekend.

You need to see some pictures.

View of the Dona Ana Mountains. I think. From our hike yesterday up some hills.

I wore Penny out. She is so cute, and spoiled.

The Organ mountains, a view from the living room.

Relative Humidity

I never really thought about it before, but today it could not be ignored.

Growing up in Singapore where the average relative humidity is about 84% was... sticky, I guess is the best word. 84% is quite high, that's breathing-water high. And I love it. It feels nice and warm, because as humans we perceive the weather to be warmer if there is a higher humidity. (No I didn't make that up, I googled it with my google-fu skills)

Well, today in Las Cruces there was very low humidity. Now I know it is the desert, I can see it out my window, but seriously. And yesterday the humidity, or lack thereof, didn't really get to me even when I went on an hour and half hike way up the arroyo.

I took this picture standing in an arroyo, which basically translates to a brook, but of course there is only water in these arroyos when there has been rain, which causes flash flooding. So right now they look like dried up riverbeds. Kinda depressing, and yet still beautiful.

A smaller arroyo where Penny and I had lunch and water.

Oh yeah, relative humidity. So yesterday there was only 20% humidity, that's it.Well, today there was even less, just when I thought it couldn't get drier, it did.

5 percent. Just 5 little percentage points of moisture.

Please pass my water bottle, I'm drying out thanks. I'm like a fish on land, dry mouthed and confused. (Mom, do you like the way I tied in Fish is Fish? yeah, I thought you might)

Here is my pair of socks that I haven't been working on. But I decided to finish the puppies up, before it gets too warm to wear them.

Soon Coming!: My amazing class, and the wonderful teachers.

P.S Why is this blue? What happened?

Schools Everywhere are the same, no, really. And lizard face.

Schools everywhere are the same. I really believe that. No matter how many times you apply to schools, it never gets easier. The applications are nearly the same. They still make you walk around in circles once you get there trying to get everything settled and organized. The people are never more efficient or helpful or knowledgeable than the last school. At worse, they know, understand or help less. I can't count how many times today I got that "I have no idea on God's green earth what you are talking about look". Then of course you try to go back over in your mind the last thing you said out loud. My brain says, "yeah, that makes sense" and they're still looking at me like I'm crazy. Well, I'm not. I'm eccentric and I'm saving up to be full-blowncrazy.

I have decided that it is just cultural differences and it is the wording that they don't understand. So I try again, another way. And eventually it gets through that I actually know what I'm about. Go, Lauren!

Other than that I don't really have much to say. My skin on my face is so dry, I'm starting to look like this.

Or maybe this.

Either way, its getting interesting.