The Staples of Life

I finished my first week of new teacher orientation. Let me tell you, there is a lot that goes on before students EVER arrive at school. The highlight of the week (or perhaps the low light, I suppose) was when I managed to put a staple in my hand. I was replacing the staples in the stapler on my desk, and I pressed down at exactly the wrong moment, so instead of going into my bulletin board, the staple went into my palm. It bled and everything. I do hope this incident isn't indicative of how the year is going to go. At any rate, my classroom is slowly coming together, my lesson plans are coming along, and I'm mentally gearing up for teenagers. I'll keep you posted.

Are we there yet?

I'm off with my family to go visit my grandparents. I probably won't have Internet for a while, so for the next two weeks, no news is good news. We've already driven across North Dakota, but I fear Montana is going to be full of "are we there yet" comments. Seriously. How much bigger can this state get?

I'm finishing projects again (and have a bit of news, too)!

I've been busy for the past few weeks. Here's what I've been doing:


Picking lots of these off of our raspberry bushes and, amongst other things, turning them into
these:

.

I've also been finishing Works in Progress projects, including these two goodies:


A crocheted baby blanket

and



another quilted table runner. The funny thing about the runner is that I had pieced the top and gotten the layers all ready to assemble when I (for some reason) put it away briefly. I have been looking for this thing for several months, and when I found it the other day it was in with my serger. How did it end up there, instead of with my other quilting projects, you might ask? Your guess is as good as mine.

Here's a close-up of the fabric.




I love this runner pattern. It starts with a striped fabric, and has only 5 seams. I think I'm going to have to make some more. It's a good thing I'm trying to finish projects, not start them; otherwise, I think I might have to go in search of cute striped fabric. This particular runner was a test to see how I liked the pattern; I can honestly recommend it highly.

Oh, and don't worry--you probably won't get many more finished project updates from me for a while. I'm finally going to start having real news to post. You see, in the middle of writing lesson plans, class syllabi, and completing new teacher orientation, I don't think I'm going to have much in the way of free sewing time for quite a while. Yup, it's officially official. I have a full-time job for the coming school year. I actually interviewed for it in June and received the offer at the beginning of July, but I was waiting for the actual paperwork to be all signed before I formally announced it. Needless to say, I'm pretty excited. Nervous, anxious, thrilled, excited, and scared out of my gourd, but looking forward to it, nonetheless. Anyone have any brillant lesson plans s/he wants to share with me? :)