Do Have a Cross Word with Me

Let me apologize for being late; I didn't have any way to get online until today.  Anyway, let me explain a little about last week's puzzle.  I wanted a theme, and going with the four seasons seemed very appropriate.  I chose the title based on the House Stark motto from Game of Thrones ("Winter is coming.")  I was originally going to have 'spring fever' and 'summer break' as answers, but I didn't like that 'v' in any of the prospective spots, so I switched things up.  The theme answers were going to be huddled around the center of the grid, but i spaced things out to make thing easier on me.  It wasn't the case.  I started at the top right corner with 'spring break' and worked around it.  I was lucky to get the answers for 15 and 17 Across, but I soon gave up on trying to find any more long answers, even though it meant more three-letter answers overall.  I couldn't find any better answer for 19 Across than 'Ensor' mostly because I couldn't find any definition for "Reider" anywhere.  As I did the left side, I thought I was going great with 'derring-do' instead of 'derringer', but that really wasn't the case.  The lower left side was easy, even with the My Little Pony reference thrown in.  The center was hard.  I first tried to get "Iago" for 22 Across, but it just kept messing me up.  So, I stared on the bottom with the clues around 'falling down.'  I lucked out by quickly finding 'I Need You Now" and 'Garcia Lorca' for the area.  That meant that 42 Down had to end with 'a-w-n' though.  At first it was going to be "at dawn" or "of dawn."  I just couldn't make those answers work with clues I was getting for the middle.  I ultimately had to go with the faux Latin 'ides amo' for 24 Down, (I guess in means 'I like the fifteenth') even though it is really irregular.  It would wind up with me putting 'er, sawn' as 42 Down.  Technically, it could also be "ers awn" which would mean something along the lines of the beard found on a grain similar to vetch, but I couldn't cross check it, so I went with the clue I provided.  I know neither are that good, but I couldn't get it any better.  At least I could fix the upper right corner fairly well, even with 'anis' for 14 Down.  Many of the choices I made were to keep standard crossword rules, something I didn't always do the last time I made these puzzles in community college.  Lastly, I transferred my grid to an empty one from an old puzzle magazine I had.  If I knew I wouldn't be able to crop the image, I would have treated it better.  Still, I consider this crossword one of my better recent accomplishments.  I don't think I will do another for a while.  It took me a week to make this one, and I should have taken a little more time to get it right.  You can expect other puzzling entries, though, as that is the purported theme of this blog.