Busy, busy

I've been a little busy the last week or two.  After returning from the annual La Gear Up Spring Conference on Saturday, I managed to do a bit of sewing before returning to school yesterday. 

That was a blessing, since I've also been fighting a low-grade migraine.  It must have helped to get back into the studio yesterday, I woke up to a clear head this morning. 

This afternoon I slipped back into the studio for a few minutes to finish the little project I started yesterday. 

Remember the little pouch that I'd read about on Carla's blog and then made using Debbie's directions? 

 Well, I got sucked into the madness, let me tell you!  I've completed pouch number two.  This one has a couple of accessories--a pen holder and a key fob.  I'd like to be able to carry both while at work.  Wearing the first one to work may have gotten me into trouble: students saw it and have been begging me to make pouches for them, "please, please." 

Of course they are batting eyelashes at the time!  (Sometimes those eyelashes work.)  Of course, I can't make enough for every student who wants one, but I'm thinking I might make a few and have a drawing.

In addition to all the testing and traveling and teaching, I've been writing a bit.  I like to write when my students write.  This last poem is one I wrote during a recent poetry writing session, but even more so I wrote this poem about the kids who were in my classroom writing their own poems.  Is that confusing?   I hope not.  Here's the poem: I hope you like it.

poet and poem

They sit, quiet

thoughts whirling, brains engaged, hands busy

Difficult, this work, messy, thought-provoking.

blank paper stares back for much too long

pen smudges, crumple, toss.

One kitten curls in tight on herself

but still the words come.

A zebra of lines, doodles, words sits

wanting more.

Ah, aha, awe! more and more

words come—

simile, symbol, synecdoche

connotation, consonance, conceit

archtype, alliteration, assonance

poet and poem emerge