Civil War Knit-Along Update

I'm almost at the "scary" part of the pattern! The last time I tried to knit a sontag, the "wings" turned out to be much too tiny. I plan on making the additions that Mrs. Formby suggests on the Ragged Soldier pattern. It is starting to feel cozy on my lap, I'm sure it is going to be really warm.

I was going to switch to my really long needles for the photo so you could see it stretched to the fullest but I couldn't find them.  The photo doesn't really show how big it is.I hope it fits, I will be incredibly disappointed if it doesn't. It looks a little small but the border will add a little bit of length.

I believe I forgot to mention that we need a button for one of the wings for fastening it. I am thinking of getting a pretty mother-of-pearl button for it.

I would like to put a fancy crocheted border on it, but I can't crochet. If I figure out how to crochet one, I will, if not I'll just have to knit the one in the original Godey's pattern.  I can't wait for these to be finished! They look so pretty.  

From the Archives

I really like art. I haven't done much lately, I guess I haven't been much inspired. Which I guess can be a good thing because when you are inspired you have to work on a piece or your brain will explode. Yes, you have to work on it until it is done, ignoring your family, friends and even food. I hate sharing my artwork because while I am working on a piece, it is my favorite piece, but once it's finished, I think it's crap. Everything is this post is so old, I KNOW it's not good and I know I've improved.

It's hard to share art, you just want to fix it every time you look at it. I found a bunch of old drawings on my computer, I decided to share. This stuff is at least 5 years old or so. I don't even know where most of it is anymore. The drawing at the top is a truly "lost work." Someone stole it years ago (there's a huge back story where it was "lost track of,") who knows where it is now or if it even is in existence still. 

I repeatedly failed art and never started drawing seriously until I dropped art. There's something about time limits and rules that just make it impossible to draw something you like or care about in the least. 

Who can draw or paint on a schedule and then get graded on it? It's horrible! I could never do it. My younger sister is an art major, and very good, I don't know how she does it. I'd go crazy, producing art like a trained monkey. 

 

The model in the picture at the top, requested that I draw him this for his room. I oblidged since it was nice of him to model for the drawing, he was just some random kid in my math class at the time...I guess I should have been doing math? The next day after I gave it to him, he told me his mother complained that I hadn't signed it. I didn't really realize it until then, that I don't sign anything. I still don't. My signature is atrosious and would only make things worse.  





I have a lot of doodles in my sketchbooks. Doodling is just so relaxing. I am not a good doodler, some people can doodle and it just turns out amazing. My doodles are just squiggles and shapes. It mortifies me when people look in my sketchbook. It looks like a third grader drew in it. Sometimes I even doodle with crayons. It's fun and makes you feel like a kid again. 

I used to draw a lot of anime and manga. I had a couple manga stories going which a lot of people liked it was just way to much work to draw it all. I am much more of a story person. I have passed the baton to my little sister. She draws anime very very well. I help her make complete stories out of her ideas, she draws the comic, I ink it and then she colors it. We can both make comics alone but it's much more productive and fun together. She is currently working on one that sounds fun. 

I'm sorry I was lazy and didn't feel like writing an interesting post today. It's just so hot! I've been aching to draw something but haven't started. I cleaned off my ink pens and have just been doodling. Looking over these drawings is horrific for me. It's like looking at your baby pictures.  

How Close are the Guns? How to Calculate How Close a Storm is

"Men go back to the mountains, as they go back to sailing ships at sea, because in the mountains and on the sea they must face up."

 I hate math. Everyone who knows me knows that I am a firm believer in the "when you need to know it, you will learn it," math method. I am the first person to say "I'll never use this," and that has been the case for most math. I normally kick myself when I need some geometry for sewing or something but it normally only takes a minute to look up a formula and figure it out. Not that I hate math itself, I have just never been any good at it. I know that all math is functional but I feel that teachers tend to leave out what we would really ever use certain formulas for. Since I love practical math and this math formula is easy and fun, I thought I share it:

   

Figuring how close guns are by using the time lapsed between the flash of it and the sound it makes is practically the same as figuring out how close a storm is by counting the seconds between when you see lightning it and when you hear the thunder. I think it is interesting that many movies will have the flash of a cannon and the sound at the same time. If you were any distance away, there would be a discrepancy due to the fact that light travels faster than sound. 

To find out how far away a storm is you would sound how many seconds from after you see a lightning flash until you hear the thunder. You take that number and multiply it by 1080ft (How fast sound travels on average, temperature and medium affect how fast sound travels. At sea level, it is 1125ft.) Then divide that by 5,280 (the number of feet in a mile for us who forget,) and you get how many miles away a storm is.

Ex. 10 seconds x 1080 (How many feet sound travels in a second) / 5,280 (Number of feet in a mile) =  2.045 miles

It roughly equates to a mile every 5 seconds. Remember that for next storm!

Class dismissed!

Civil War Era Knit-Along Update

Hopefully, many of us have all been knitting a period item for about a week now. I haven't gotten very far on mine. Regardless of how far you are or what you are knitting, you can show off your color choices and pieces so far. Just write up a blog post and link to it using the link function at the bottom of this post. You can link until Monday. 

I chose to use a forest green and a dark brown for my sontag. I keep forgetting to increase at the beginning of each row and end up remembering half way through the row. Once you get the hang of the basket weave pattern, it is fun to work on. I have been using a yarn called "Swish" from Knitpicks.com and have been using size 8 needles.        

 I have seen sontags laid out and it never looks like it will fit the body the right way, but they always do! I am happy with how it looks so far. I was really undecided when I was choosing colors. I have too much maroon knitted period items. I thought the dark green and brown would offset them nicely. I only have two reenacting dresses, one is green checkered and the other maroon and white calico. I know that one of the biggest reenactor pet-peeves is being too "matchy." I try my best but I know what I like.

As you can see from the photo at the top, Coal the Kitty is such a full supporter of the Civil War Era Knit-Along that he has chosen to play with a period correct toy--around the room and eventually down the stairs. As usual, I can't wait to see everyone's work. It is amazing how many talented bloggers there are out there! 

The New England Primer: Colonial School in the Northeast

In the Early Colonial period, religion was the backbone of education.  In 1642, the Puritans in Massachusetts passed a law which used elected members of the colony to oversee  education to make sure that children were receiving an appropriate education and that they understood the laws of the colony. Many colonies followed the model that the Puritans set. 

 





 
 In 1647, the Puritans passed the Old Deluder Satan Law which was designed to make sure that all of their citizens were able to read the Bible to protect themselves from Satan. To make this possible, the law required that every town with fifty houses to pay a teacher to teach reading and writing. Also, every town with at least one hundred houses was required to erect a grammar school to prepare boys for higher learning.


 


By 1683, William Penn made a law which fined the parents of children who could not read and write by the time they were twelve, five pounds. A lot of money back then. While educating slaves was not illegal yet, few were educated. Some African schools were erected by Quakers but elsewhere in the colonies, few were taught. 


Schools during the American Colonial period were typically one-roomed buildings built by communities or churches. School boards were elected by the community and they built the school as they saw fit without any regulations. Each school board chose their own teacher and set their own tuition costs. Teaching was a predominately male profession, with men making about one hundred pounds a year and women teachers only making thirty percent of that. Some schools even had their teacher board at students' houses to reduce financial strain on the teachers. Many students also paid their teacher in foods and other farm goods.


 In the schoolroom, boys and girls had separate benches. The children were of mixed ages and girls tended only to stay for a few years, so they could learn home skills. Since school took place only in the winter and months when children weren't needed on farms, the students were expected to bring wood to feed the fire. It was very rare for students to have textbooks. Normally the schoolmaster had the only textbook. Children typically had a horn-book (pictured top, left,) which was a small paddle of wood which had a lesson printed on it which was then covered by a thin sheet of cow horn to protect the print. Horn-books could be threaded with string and worn around the neck.

Paper was scarce so most work was done verbally. Reading, writing, religion, and spelling. Latin grammar schools for boys only, taught Greek and Latin. Students were expected to memorize and recite their lessons, which were usually a religious rhyme. Copy-books taught nice handwriting, which was considered more important than good spelling as many words of the time were spelled phonetically. 







Learning handwriting by tracing over letters written in a faint ink is attributed to John Locke and very similar to how we teach children to learn to write in modern times.   

*Note: The poem and etchings are from the most popular Colonial textbook, The New England Primer from 1727. Int he late 1700s, the poem was changed to include more religious rhymes and to exclude all references to the King. Etchings of King George II were ripped out of the older Primers during the revolution and few exist today. In future printings, George Washington was printed at the beginnings.