Luddites and Football

So here I am sitting alone in the grandly titled Council Meeting Room, having just finished an ICT committee meeting where we discussed amongst other things tablet trials (android or apple?), video conferencing and storage limits....so yes, from the sublime to the, shall we say it, rather less sublime.
So great to sit in a meeting, have the question raised about what is available for independent schools with video excursions and conferencing (the det schools wipe the floor with this stuff), so I put out a tweet and within 30 seconds there's feedback.
It's also great to have the lovely Chris, teacher librarian extraordinaire who is so humble in her approach but so dynamic and keen to get amongst technology, seeing its potential but also seeing its inevitability.
In my opinion, we don't need to be concerned about swapping devices between junior and senior schools. These are kids who are moving between devices without a thought. It is the adult digital immigrants who find it difficult to entertain the dynamic nature of technology.
Anyway onto other matters, tonight I am going here...

I wish I could orient the pic but you get the picture (literally)...football with the Parramatta Eels who are bottom of the ladder on 4 points. Shame. I'm pretty much just going for the food and unlimited alcohol.

Duty

i am writing report comments on 230 semester 1 reports. i am new to the school so i have pictures next to me of the little girls about whom i am writing closing, hopefully encouraging comments.
but because it's report writing 'season' (education is such a seasonal job...it's right up there with owning a pool shop), of course i am finding a whole lot of other distractions suddenly a whole lot more fascinating...like blog-cruising, list-writing, flickr-photostream-updating, netball-watching (go sydney swifts!) and sister-chatting...not to mention all the other 'pinteresting' things i get sidelined with.
my latest list is 'quilts i want to make one day'. it includes:

• farmers wife
• another log cabin but a scrappy one this time a bit like this one from red pepper quilts...one of my blog crushes!
• a jacob's ladder like this (love everything lucy does) but maybe using this tutorial 
• clare's stars - my cousin's specialty
• equilateral triangle or half square triangle or this one too
• tumbler with the ready cut fabrics i bought at fabric-a-brac in sydney a few weeks ago
• swoon (who doesn't!)
• salt air crossing using a lovely little fandango jelly roll i have tucked away
• enduring grace - i bought the book about 15 years ago in holland but have not got past a bit of applique experimentation

so there you have it. a long list. a big pile of reports. i know what will win.

A Nine-Patch of the Disappearing Variety

I had a couple of lovely charm packs of Bliss (have a look at it here). A little play with Jenny's Disappearing Nine-Patch found here at the end of a Quilting Queens afternoon, was all consuming, and 90 minutes later I had the makings of the basic quilt top.

Then home to add borders including my first go with prairie points of the continuous variety found here (where would I be without youtube...?).

A spot of machine quilting (my first ever attempt) of cross-hatching and scallops and I was good to go. I just had to wait for Madi to be born.....

New York Web

When I was in New York in 2010 with The Sensible Girl, we stopped by The City Quilter and I picked up a couple of their City Strippers (kind of like Jelly Rolls but not necessarily all from one range, so they're individual and quirky). One of the packs I got contained a lot of Moda Botany by Lauren and Jessi Jung. So I sewed them together in pleasing triple strips.........cut them with a 60 degree ruler (an equilateral triangle) ....

 

Joined 'em into cute little half hexies....alternating the orientation of the triangles so I got this cute alternating centres and outside strips but consistent middle strips.

(for those playing at home, each 42 inch strip set yielded 11 triangles....not exactly what I planned but it means I have heaps of triangles left over for another quilt which is already forming in my mind!)

I tried them in this combination, going for a scrappy, somewhat random spiderweb effect, but I just felt the pretty fabrics and patterns were lost and because I had alternated the direction of the triangles in the hexies, the hexies themselves were even a bit lost. So......

I set them with white triangles using white fabric I had bought to go with the City Stripper in NYC right back at the start. Lovely Sister Susan solved the problem of how to finish off the gappy top and bottom by using a third of a hexie (a diamond...patchwork is all about maths!). Lovely yellow border and now it just goes away until Term 1 ends and I can face quilting it!

Love it, but!

A National Day for All?

Today is Australia Day, a distinctly uncomfortable day for many of my country-folk who cringe at the idea of placing our National Day on the date of the arrival of European settlement. "Uncomfortable" and "cringe" are actually massive understatements. The 26th January 1788 was a day that began a long, fraught and often violent relationship between Indigenous Australians and the millions of immigrants who flooded their land. Today, reportedly sparked by a shameful comment from the Leader of the Opposition regarding the 40 year anniversary of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy opposite Parliament House (the original Occupy movement!), our Prime Minister was threatened by an enormous crowd of people and needed evacuating from a function she was attending. She was jostled, pushed and bustled into a waiting car by security officers. She lost a shoe in the process. Such is the unresolved, unreconciled depth of justifiable distrust and disgust by many Indigenous Australians.

Tomorrow I start a new job.
I say 'start' but in fact I've been there for two weeks but without most staff or any students. I'm not scared as such; I know I can do the job and I feel inspired. So there's not fear exactly, but there is this feeling. Call it natural trepidation, excitement, anticipation. I also hope I hear my alarm.

I'm not completely unknown to the school. I've worked for five years at the 'brother' school across the road. And the staff know some of what I'm about as a leader. But I wonder if they are scared? A renewed direction, a different energy. I've done this really daggy thing and bought every teacher a reflection journal. I really believe that for a school to continually improve it has to be a reflective school. Teachers (and leaders!) need to continually reflect on what they planned, what resulted, the expected and unexpected outcomes, the modifications that need to happen, and what they have learned as a result. This can form the basis for ongoing professional learning, which in turn can be a vehicle for growth via reflection. It can be exciting. I hope they are excited.