November 15, 2013

I pretty much made no progress on storybooks today. I almost finished the page I left off on yesterday but it wasn't meant to be. This morning there was an orchestra performance in the gym and the kids were really good and it made me want to learn violin. I have wanted to learn for many many years now but have never gotten around to it. Really I want to play all the instruments. Someday.

Second grade reading groups went by fast. Mostly because I didn't actually have a group today. Instead, I interviewed two of the kids, had several other kids read their word lists to me, and then read with one of the kids. It was kind of nice not trying to keep a group on task.

This afternoon one of the kindergarten teachers came to the lab and asked me if I knew how to change the color of one thing in a picture without messing with everything else. He recently had family pictures taken and I guess one of his sons was wearing white socks and everyone else had dark socks. And one of the kids had a green stripe on his shoes that is apparently distracting. I told him I didn't know how to do that but I would mess around and see if I could figure it out. And I did. I typed in 'highwater pants' in Google to get a picture of exposed white socks to work with and then tried different things. I used the Path tool to outline the socks, then made a selection along the path which allowed me to alter just that part of the picture. Then I used a few of the color tools and was able to change the color of the socks. It was pretty simple actually. I've always wondered about that but never got around to trying it. I told the teacher how to do it but I'm not sure if he is going to attempt the edit himself or if he is going to have me try it. Or let the photographer do it.

My new phone case arrived today. I ordered it Wednesday night and it showed up this afternoon. Free two-day shipping is a wonderful thing. As for the case, I already like it a lot more than the previous case. It is more bulky but not overly so, and this actually makes the phone easier to hold. My last case was really thin and it is kind of hard to hold a wide phone that is really thin. The case also just feels more sturdy and it could definitely take a beating without hurting the phone. I just wish I had bought this one first.

Tonight at work I read a little bit but I mostly worked on a new owl hat. Trying out my bigger circular needles. I actually came somewhat close to finishing the hat. And I can tell it will probably be too big. It seems as if I am going to have to put more thought into the hat design, beyond just following a pattern. We'll see how the hat turns out. The beginning of the hat was a little troublesome, trying to stretch it along the circular needles, but after the first few rows it became much easier. I just wish I had a slightly small pair of circular needles, I'm assuming 10.5 because I am using 11 and the pattern calls for 10. I think the double-pointed needles I used on the first hat were 9s and they don't seem much smaller than 10s, so I was wary about attempting the 10 circular needles I have (that and dealing with the longer needles) because I didn't think they would drastically increase the size of the hat. But maybe I'm wrong.

Good grief it's late.