A Little Tinkering

 Well, the days have been busy around here lately. My schedule looks something like this:

5:00 boys wake up and climb into bed for a snuggle, causing much noise and chaos
5:10 boys get kicked out of bed to go play
5:45 my alarm goes off and I get up and get ready for work
6:30 I leave the house and walk up the block to catch the bus
6:50 I transfer from the bus to the metro
7:30 I transfer from the metro back to the bus (with the bus driver that flirts with me every morning despite being a good 20 yrs older than me)
8:00 I arrive at work and deal with argumentative and rebellious teenagers with a serious sense of entitlement (as in "Just because I haven't handed anything in all term doesn't mean you can fail me.")
12:30 lunch
2:40 done teaching and so I clean up, get everything ready for the next day and rush off to
3:30 catch the bus back to the metro station
4:00 transfer from the bus to the metro
4:25 transfer from the metro to the bus

4:50 arrive at the top of my block and walk down the hill to my house.
If its a daycare day, I then:
5:00 get in the car and drive to pick up the kids
5:15 start supper
5:45 eat supper
6:20 do homework with Andrew, while Aaron and Emma have a bath
7:30 start putting the boys to bed (usualy mostly Dave's job)
8:30 start putting Emma to bed
9 - 10 fall asleep with Emma

Occasionally in that 9 - 10 block, if Emma is not falling asleep, I will do a little bit of sewing while she plays (or watches and tries to sew her hands to the fabric). In that way I have had a chance to stitch a little here and there on various projects:

As you can see, I have been tinkering with a bunch of things.  The pink and green thing is my dysfunctional flower for sarah and molly's free piecing study (glad I made mine first, not Mel's). The blue fabric is my unhemmed skirting the issue skirt (pattern and fabric Anna Maria Horner). The scotty dog shape is, well, a scotty dog in the making (following the free downloadable pattern on Denyse Schmidt's website).
 

This is the other thing I picked up last week: an embroidery kit. I thought it could keep me busy during my commute, or when the school year starts drawing to a close and I have nothing to do at work (since I don't know where I'll be next year I'll have some free time on my hands in between invigilating exams - On a side note, I love the word invigilating. It sounds so sinister.) The embroidery patterns are from the Black Apple. I think I might stitch a hedgehog and rabbit having tea . . . not sure what for yet. I also want to use the cute little village for something, eventually, but I'm not sure what yet.

What have you been doing in those little spaces in your day?