Teaching and My New Pattern, Shetland Rose.

I love and hate teaching at the same time.  It truly is a job not for the faint of heart.  You have to be teacher, counselor, parent, and confidant to, in my case, 189 students.  This year has been a difficult year for me.  I have one of the worst mixes of children ever.  On their own, the majority are great kids.  However, the current combination of the little babies takes them from cherubic status to that of demi demon.  Many days I just want to stab myself in the face because it would be less painful than trying to teach.

Even though my days are difficult, I am still rewarded with some amazing moments.  To understand one of these moments, I have to give you a little background information.   Here in Portland, OR, we have lots of water and there are many open reservoirs in parks around town.  Of course, the reservoirs are fenced and they have security cameras.  We didn't have any issues until recently when an inebriated individual jumped the fence and urinated in one of the reservoirs.  In typical hysteria, the City drained the entire reservoir.  So, we wasted 38 million gallons of water over a cup of pee.  This caused a huge scandal here in Portland were we are Super eco friendly.

Okay, back to teaching.  The 8th graders are on a civics unit and they are studying impeachment.  Richard Nixon came up in association with the Watergate Scandal.  One young lady blurted, "He peed in the water?  A president peed in peoples' water?"  After drying my tears from laughing so hard, we explained what really happened.  She replied, "Oh, I thought Watergate was like the fence and gate around the reservoir."  I actually understand her confusion too.  I was eight when all that was going on and I wanted to know what a watergate looked like and how it worked.  Was it a gate made of water and how did they make the water hard to make it open and close.  This was also similar to guerrilla warfare.  As a child I wanted to know why they made all of those gorillas go to war and how did they train them to shoot a gun.

Another great gem came from a sophomore boy named Sam.  He raised his hand and said, "Mr. Hunnicutt, my urineatory system is telling me that I have to go to the bathroom."  "Well," I said.  "I'm not a science teacher but I'm pretty sure that you don't have a "urineatory system"."  After much laughter, we established that it was his excretory system that he wanted to relieve. 

Oh those kids!!!

Okay, on to knitting.  If you don't know, I actually design knitwear.  Most of what I have done has been done for Knit Picks.  It's very difficult to for me because I really want to talk about what I'm knitting but I can't until the pattern is released.  Well, here is one that just got released on the 5th.  It's called Shetland Rose.

 Isn't it FAB??!!!

This was a great knit.  It's done totally in one piece and knit from the bottom up and it's filled with lots of little extras like these.

 The inside of the button band, collar and cuff is a delicate little pattern that adds a nice contrast to the rest of the pattern.

Then, there is the gusset and the sleeve.

The gusset has its own pattern and the contrasting colours are carried down the sleeve.  I love little details.  They just make the sweater more interesting.


Personally, I think this is my best design to date and I appreciate how it made me think.  Let me know your thoughts.