Hi all!
Thank you for the well-wishes - MrLeta (haha!!) is mostly back to normal, as long as he doesn't "over do it".
I'm really liking the job - it's not as much money as I wanted, so it's going to take awhile to replenish my emergency fund, but I'm by NO means complaining! I have already been a good influence on my team, by programming a couple of "tools" to automate some of our more tedious processes.
In the meantime, I've been playing with the threads that came in, testing to see which ones I like best before I actually start on my LoneStar. I posted the sketch awhile back, and here's my "test" version. As usual, it didn't go quite exactly as I had planned, but it's close. I think I have decided that I'm going to use more color in here too, not just the white/gray. And I'm still "on the wagon"... being broke does make you think twice... or 3 or 4 or 5 times... before buying a 'non-necessity", especially since I have tons of stash that needs to be used up.