The lace portion of the new sweater has been finished. Now it’s on to the stockinette stitch section, which truthfully is the largest piece. At least I can do that without referring to the pattern every row.

In the meantime, I’m slowly but steadily ironing my way through the monster size bundle of team fabrics that’s been sitting on the floor in the dining room for the past couple of years. I purchased three medium flat-rate boxes of NFL team fabric scraps from someone else, only to discover that I’d overlooked the fact it was coming from a home with someone who smokes. To say that the fabric reeked would not be an understatement. I washed it a couple of different times, wound up stuffing it all back into large black plastic garbage bags, and just let it sit with the hope that the odor would finally dissipate. Last fall I took a more proactive stance once again…washed it all once more, and draped it outside for a day or two (took a week or more to air all the pieces). There’s still something residual there, but Dave and I can’t quite decide if it’s still cigarette smoke or a result of sitting in the plastic all this time at this point. We’re trying to get things picked up and put away so I’m going through, organizing, ironing and storing all the pieces now. By the time all was said and done, I came away with at least a little bit of fabric for all but two of the NFL teams. I started ironing with the teams that only had a small amount of fabric on hand, and quickly went through the majority of the teams. What’s left are the five or six teams that have a fairly large amount of fabric each.

In other news, our church is planning to host a craft show this spring. We have a date on the calendar, and hopefully as of Sunday we’ll have more than two people willing to help put it together. (Guess who is one of the two current people!) More info (or not, depending on time) as this develops.

Also in other news, one of the two speech paths is likely to start maternity leave as of next week. No official word yet on when/what extra work I may be doing for the district. At least the other one isn’t due for another month. I initially thought the babies were due within a couple of weeks of each other.

I hadn’t intended to stop posting after August….

Once we were back from Mom’s house last August, school started up again. My caseload is slightly larger this year…number-wise it’s not that much bigger but time-wise those few extra kids are really making a difference in the time I had available for other responsibilities at work.

I trimmed some shows from the fall schedule, but also managed to add a few more. I worked steadily on getting those placemat sets that were quilted in August finished up. I managed to do a few each week, just enough to keep my head above water. I also made the conscious decision not to sweat replacing specific items as they sold out this year. In other words, if I sold out of bowls in a particular fabric, then I was simply out for the fall. Anyone who really wanted one ordered it at that point.

Christmas plans changed and we were up in Colorado for Christmas instead of having everyone here. That was nice because I didn’t have to worry about people tripping over the still-to-be-repaired spots on the floor where the tile came out for the foundation work.

Once back in Texas, the gutter company was back out to fix the one last bit of work, we also had them install leaf screens. We finally reached the construction company to discover that they were still waiting on some information from us before ordering the replacement exterior shutters. Those went on yesterday.

The next round of repairs/home improvements is about to start. That’s going to be the floor in the boys’ bathroom. We’re selecting flooring now and potentially they’re starting work next week. The true extent of the work will be determined once they start ripping up the floor. Insurance estimated that we wouldn’t need to replace the subfloor under the cabinets. The contractor is less certain of that aspect.

In other news, I discovered that the paints I bought (many) years ago for the as-yet-unfinished nativity set are apparently salvagable. Since that particular company is no longer in business, this is great news. I hope to get started on that shortly.

And I’m working on a sweater for me that sat from sometime in August until Christmas break, when Cat and I took a close look at it.

All in all, lots of plans for things to complete this spring. The truth, I suspect, is that perhaps half of them will get done, and that will be the repair work that I’m not actually tackling myself. We have a couple of speech paths going out on maternity leave within the next few weeks and my “personal project” time is probably going to disappear when that happens. On the other hand, if I must be on hand for repair appointments, I just might get some things done around here.