I don’t know about the rest of you, but my summer is zipping by incredibly fast. Summertime as a “season” is pretty darn short up here on the mountain anyway, but the main measure I use is the summer break my children have from school.

I had visions of more time to keep up with the blog this summer. Then the last week of April my crochet career got a serious kick in the pants.  Leisure Arts contacted me about a proposal of mine and suddenly I was working on my first project for them.

Of course I was also finishing up other projects that I had commitments for, adopting and integrating a new dog into my family, going on a 2 week family vacation road-trip, preparing for the Manchester Knit and Crochet Show (which included lots of work for the CGOA Design Competition that I was Co-chairing), and having my brother come out for a week-long visit with his kiddos and my Dad. Whew!

Somehow I did manage to finish the pattern writing and crocheting the samples for the Leisure Arts project. Now all that is left for that project is some waiting. The latest news is that it should be available to purchase in January 2013. Don’t worry, you’ll hear more from me about it when it is.

Now I’m playing catch-up with getting proposals put together for more crochet designs, as well as writing patterns and crocheting samples for designs I’ve sold from earlier proposals.

It is one of the truths about being a freelance designer. You have to keep “feeding” the pipeline if you want to be working regularly. I’ve actually not sent in submissions for some of the deadlines of late since I really need to get caught up with stuff for my house and family. Of course, some submission deadlines I had to let pass because I was just too busy with everything else.

My boys will be starting back to school in just 10 days. First day of school this year is August 15th. Kinda looking forward to them being back in school and not.

The good news is, they will both be in school all day this year, so I won’t be making 3 trips to the school for drop-off and pick-up.  And I will have an entire 6 hours everyday with-out small voices saying “Mom” every 20 minutes. My beloved has been warned that interruptions during that 6 hours should be well-considered or there might be violence.

The bad news is, there will be no more sleeping in for mom. My boys are independent enough these days that I can occasionally indulge in a late morning. But once school starts, we will all be getting up bright and early to be sure a healthy hearty breakfast is consumed and that everyone is dressed and ready to go on-time. I will only be allowed late mornings on the week-ends, and even those seem to get rather busy during the school year.