Summer Projects Finished....I'm Ready for School

School starts again on Tuesday, and my first day back with students is Thursday.  I am ready!  I feel that I've spent enough time with the new textbooks and the updated curriculum that I'm ready to go.  Plus, I'm just excited and happy to see the children again and start singing!  I have some great songs to start the year.

We have a wonderful year ahead with plenty of extraordinary opportunities.  In addition to all the great stuff that goes on during a regular year, my little choir of 9 and 10 years olds (self selected, non-auditioned, public school!)  will be performing with the Northwest Indiana Symphony in December and then will travel to the Indiana Music Educators Conference in Ft Wayne during January for a performance at the convention. Plenty to be excited (nervous/anxious/worried) about and to look forward to doing.  In addition, I'm gearing up to lead a couple of teacher workshops (Chicago Area Kodaly Educators conference in September and the West Virginia Orff Association spring conference in April) and a Circle the State with Song Festival in February.  It's going to be a great school year (fingers crossed)

I feel "settled" at the end of this wonderful summer.  The wedding was lovely in July, which just makes it all perfect.

I've loved my intensive crafting time.  I've gotten to do EVERY project on my wish list, plus a couple of extra things just because projects came to mind.  One thing leads to another. More on those later in the blog, but now...the big reveal:

The Crate and Barrel Throw is finished!  This monster weighs a ton!!!  The yarn is a super bulky weight and the pattern called for 13 skeins, if I remember correctly.  Toward the end, it was almost too much to lift and it was much too warm to hold on my lap when I was knitting.  Now, it's completed (except for blocking) and I think it looks beautiful.  I'm so happy with it!.  I believe I started this right before the wedding (remember I had hours of knitting in the car on the way out and back to Colorado - when I wasn't the driver!) and finished it this morning.

So...what's next?  Well, it all starts with something like "I was thinking...."  These might be the three most dangerous words in my vocabulary because they are closely followed by "What if?" and then....I'm off on some tangent!

In this case I'm thinking about starting a fabric arts project and I'm signing up to take a class called "Stitch and Slash" where you use ripped and layer fabrics to design art projects for home decor, etc.  Stay tuned.