This Week

This week I started the summer session in the studio and we went to approximately 8 MILLION baseball games. Baseball season is almost over and we'll be a little sad when it's done, but I won't be sad about not having to figure out how to keep Ellie up until 9:30/10 on game nights. She's in that weird transition from 2 naps to 1 nap, where she needs different things on different days.

On the Needles... 

The Boneyard Shawl is still in progress, I'm working on another cardigan for Ellie for this fall as I have time, and I have the first of the grey and coral Regia socks on the needles. I find myself mostly working on the Boneyard Shawl, but taking the sock to baseball games.

I read...

Still Game of Thrones, but I got a solid 90 minutes of time in last night and made a ton of progress. I'm still trying to get it done by tomorrow night, but not sure I'll get it done. If I run out of time hopefully I can queue it back and get it back quickly.

Just Keep Spinning…

I'm trying to get a little time with the spindle each day to "warm up" for Tour de Fleece. I'm not doing anything special for the Tour and I certainly don't expect to finish all of the wool I have to spin, but I do want to make sure to spin for at least 15 minutes each day of the tour and gain more experience.

Learning all the time…

We spent pretty much all day Monday cleaning out the school room. We threw out a TON of paper (my boys produce artwork the way they breathe) and I stacked up the finished workbooks and binders from this year. We made sure all our games have the proper pieces and everything is together, we re-stacked books on the shelves and cleaned out the cabinet drawers.

I'm working on coming up with an organization system that will be a little more self-propelled. Some things we tried this past spring really helped- one basket per kid for the books each kid works out of, a plastic tote for the art that they make (that we clean out at the end of each month) and one central place for all crayons, markers, pencils and pens have been great. 

The problem that needs a solution is the stacking. I'm super guilty of this too- it's certainly not just the boys. By the end of the week we end up with stacks of things- narrations, library books, lesson plans... and by the end of the month it's crazy. So I end up using the whole last weekend of the month to take care of all of this and I'm tired of devoting a full day to this. We (the kids AND I) really need to work on putting everything away right away.

Garden...

The strawberry plants are gone, eaten almost down to the ground. My mom needs me to take about 10 strawberry plants from her to thin out her giant patch of about 75, so we'll "re-stock" but I need to figure out who is eating the plants.

I'm hoping next year to turn up more ground for more garden space next year, and once we determine the right size I want to get some fencing up.

In Stitches...

I picked up a few simplicity patterns for Ellie and also printed off a pattern for diaper covers since this girl is wearing dresses a LOT lately. If I show her two outfits she will *always* choose a dress.

I'm hoping to get some time in today to cut patterns and fabric and maybe to get started with the sewing. We only have 3 baseball games over the weekend- maybe I can sneak in an hour with the machine then?

I didn't get to...

The Studio organizing project I'd hoped to tackle. My library of music is seriously out of order and much of it is piled in recital-prep stacks from last April. Maybe next week?

This weekend...

3 baseball games and more school planning for me. I'm finishing up all the list making and once that's done the school year feels like a breeze. I can just turn in my binder to the right subject, look at the next thing and do it. So easy!