Whether the North Texas Blacksmith Association monthly meeting is held in Gaby’s Blacksmith Shop in Frisco’s historic rail district, Fort Worth’s Art Worth Festival or in a member’s home blacksmith shop, the mission remains the same which is to teach blacksmithing skills, NTXBA President Dan Richman said.

Quote of note: “We all really enjoy the craft. When you share something you really enjoy, that makes it more satisfying,” Richman said. “By teaching—you learn.”

A Handel’s Ice Cream franchise opened Nov. 13 in Frisco, a company news release states.

The ice cream shop franchise, which is owned by Spencer Moore, his brother Jack Moore and father Craig Moore, serves classic and seasonal flavors, with 48 flavors like strawberry cheesecake, Graham Central Station, black raspberry chunk, and salty caramel truffle rotating monthly.

The details: Handel’s ice cream is made by hand in small batches at each location. The shop offers 48 flavors daily with 140 additional flavors rotating seasonally, according to the release.

McKinney saw 333 homes sold during October, with the most homes sold in the 75071 ZIP code. The city’s median home sale price was $435,260 with an average of 93 days on the market.

The specifics: Check out this real estate data for McKinney, comparing data from October 2024 to October 2025 in categories such as:

• Number of homes sold by ZIP code
• Median home sales price by ZIP code
• Average days on the market by ZIP code
• Number of new listings by ZIP code
• Number of homes under contract by ZIP code
• Homes sold by price point

Texas cannot use its newly redrawn congressional map in the 2026 election, an El Paso federal court ruled Nov. 18.

The details: The state must instead use the congressional map that Texas lawmakers drew in 2021, after the 2020 census. 

“The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics,” U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown wrote in the Nov. 18 preliminary injunction. “To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map.”

What they're saying: Texas Republican leaders said they would “swiftly appeal” the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. If the court takes up the case, its justices will be pressed for time ahead of the Dec. 8 deadline for candidates to apply to run in the March primary elections.

Texas Democrats celebrated the Nov. 18 ruling as "very good news for Texans."