Sugar Bunny Boulevard

Eye Candy Friday, Comfort Shawl and Afghan Stats!

Since no ECF is complete with baby pictures, here's what we've got.  A pair of cheesy pictures and sweet smiles.  They were each saying "cheese!"

The Comfort Shawl is finished and blocked and here's a quickie photo - I'll tell more about this shawl soon when I can take the proper photo.

Afghan stats!  Yes!  But not stats from this afghan project.... how about a few details from the project that inspired "Rebuilding Greensburg - Block by Block".... the Hokie Healing afghan project.

• Hokie Healing was created as a project to make afghans to provide comfort and healing to the families of victims of the shooting that occured on the Virginia Tech campus earlier this year.
• Hokie Healing was created by one lady*, Gina Bonomo, who is the owner of Mosaic Yarns in Blacksburg, Virginia - the home of Virginia Tech. (*and supported by many others)
• To date the Hokie Healing project has collected 8298 squares!
• The first 32 afghans for Hokie Healing are for the families of the 32 people killed (I think they were all students but I'm not completely sure).  Obviously they have more squares than needed to make just 32 afghans so they will continue seaming squares until they have used them all up - giving the afghans to injured people, then others who were in the classrooms and witnessed the events of that terrible day.  You can see photos of those 32 afghans on display at the VT campus on her blog post here.
• Hokie Healing had a seaming event in June - you can see pictures here and some news video here (why aren't there any news channels in Wichita that even care about the Greensburg afghan project??) showing their seaming event.
• There were over 100 people at the Hokie Healing seaming party.
• The people... over 100 of them... seamed for seven hours straight.
• The people.... over 100 of them... seamed 20 afghans in that time.
• Oh.
• No.
• We need a lot of people to help seam 40-50 afghans in one day.  A LOT OF PEOPLE.
• We need at least 200 people or more!  I hope there's not something else going on in El Dorado that day because I'll be recruiting high school kids, ladies from the hospital auxiliary, every knitter in the state of Kansas, plus Kansas City and major cities of Oklahoma!  OH MY GOSH we need a lot of people.  The pastors.  Their wives.  Their children.  High school kids.  I already said that but OH - maybe I need to contact the 4H people in our county.  The Home-Ec teacher at the high school (if they even call it that any more - I don't even know).  I have to get a lot of help.  OH, I can call the Community College and see if anyone there will help - OH, I know someone in my knitting meetup group who works at the Community College!  That's a good thing.  Okay, it's very very good to know some of these stats so that I can be well prepared for the seaming event.  Hopefully I can get in touch with Gina and get some more specific information from her to help our seaming event be as efficient as possible. 

Whew.  Got a little excited there, or maybe nervous.  This morning I was at the post office mailing something to Suzannah for her birthday (will not be there on time and does not contain the desired cell phone - I'm a terrible mother)... when at another window I heard a lady discussing the patterns she's mailing and how they don't qualify as Media Mail, blah blah blah.  Patterns?  What kind of patterns?  I don't care (well, actually I am curious now that I think about it).  She can probably seam afghan squares!  So I waited outside the post office and attacked this lady when she came out.  heh  I told her as fast as I possibly could about the afghan project and seaming and we need 200 people and blah blah blah and she was so cool and excited about it!  She has an eBay store and said she would link to the Rebuilding Greensburg project from her eBay store front and tell all her sewing friends!  Yay!  So anyway, I'm all about getting enough people to come help seam afghans now.  I wonder who I'll attack next?  heh

Daily Square Report - Thursday and Friday Combined:

Today we're adding 103 squares!  Yippee!!!  That makes 1837 received and 403 still needed!  WooHoo!!  But we have MORE than SQUARES!  We have Other Stuff Too!!  I've told you before that Fridays are FUN DAYS for afghan mail - my surprise today was a delightful box of good stuff from Jackie in Raleigh, North Carolina.  Jackie sent not only squares, but also 1 scarf that I LOVE and want to make one just like it for my son, 1 precious pink hooded baby cardigan, 10 winter hats in sizes ranging from child to adult, and 9 sweet little hats ranging from preemie to infant size.  What a fun package!  And all of the other packages were very generous!  I know I shouldn't do this but I'm getting kinda nervous about this project now - wanting to be sure that it all comes together as smoothly and efficiently as possible.  Some things I just can't control but I'm still very psyched up about it and thinking about details of the project constantly.  I'm always thinking "What's the next step?".

One thing I'm thinking about is seaming yarn.  The yarn company I contacted will not be donating the requested yarn for seaming.  So I need to decide how to handle that.  I don't know yet exactly how much yarn I need.  That will be determined more by how many squares we end up with!  And I need to decide whether I will accept random donations of yarn from people (y'all have already been offering)... or should I try to somehow get the money to buy all one kind of yarn?  Blah blah blah.  Oh life is tough when this is the worst thing going on, right?  Well, I'm just trying to get SO MANY PEOPLE to help with this and I don't want to get to a critical moment and realize I don't have enough seaming yarn or it looks like barf because we used random colors or who knows what.  I'm going to have to pull together probably every plastic yarn needle in the city of Wichita to do this thing too.  You probably wouldn't find 100 yarn needles if you bought every one from every Wal Mart and Michael's and Hobby Lobby in a five county area!  I have a lot to think about!  Not every person comes complete with their own Chibi and scissors.  I might just have to do a fund raiser.  Raffle?  Donations with prizes?  I need ideas. 

Any and all suggestions brainstorms and ideas are WELCOME!!  I will be chatting with my knitting group about this subject on Saturday morning at Panera, for SURE!

Today during nap time I have been burning a bit of nervous energy (good for the WLC which I still need to chat about but I don't think this will be the day).  During today's nap time I opened two days of afghan mail, wrote most of this post, and cut down a tree.  Well, half a tree.  But yes - worked on our backyard make-over.  I need to do a post about my favorite tools:  chibi, bamboo knitting needles, magnetic board for holding lace charts, and my chain saw.  Oh I do love my chain saw.  I did take pictures but the babies are waking up so I'm running out of time!

Today's squares came from the following people:

• Lora - El Dorado, KS
• Erin - El Dorado, KS
• Pat - somewhere in Kansas but I don't think I know the city - thank you for dropping your squares at Heritage Hut, Pat!!  :)
• The "H" Family - Wilmington, NC
• M.K. - Iowa Park, TX
• Barbara - Ft. Lauderdale, FL
• Monica - Hemet, CA
• Theresa - Zip 97402 (Is that Portland?  I don't have time to look it up!)
• Kirk - Lake Havasu City, AZ
• Jackie - Raleigh, NC
• Ruth Ann - Camino, CA (44 gorgeous squares!!!)

In addition to the great Other Stuff that Jackie sent, I got yet another box from the dear ones at Love's Many Cloths.  This time it was Char in Culver, Oregon, who sent a box of little soaps to go with cloths that we've already received!  Isn't that the sweetest idea!?  And the box smells SO GOOD!  heh

Everybody have a wonderful happy safe summer weekend and I'll see ya back here next time with more squares and hopefully a few bright ideas from my grrls at Panera tomorrow morning.  :)

XOXOX

Such A Small Thing

Knitting or crocheting one square is such a small thing.  Two squares is twice as small.  :)

I mentioned a few posts ago how much I enjoy the correspondence that I receive with the afghan mail that comes.  Today was an especially nice day with regard to that correspondence.  Complete strangers are bonded by a similar interest - expressing that they have care and concern for others.

The correspondence that comes with afghan mail is either notes or letters to me, or notes to the families of Greensburg.  I have been thinking a lot about the notes for Greensburg families and what exactly to do with them.  There aren't really that many at this time - possibly not even one for each afghan.  So I thought I could make a smallish (maybe 10-15 sheets of paper) book to be presented with every afghan that includes the following:

• typed messages/sentiments (condensed to several messages per page) from every card/note that is sent for the Greensburg families including images from a few of the cards.  This is mostly because I would want every family or person that receives an afghan to read all of the messages that are sent!  They're all too awesome for everyone not to have a chance to see what they say.
• pages with signatures/notes from each person that helps with the seaming project, obviously photocopied - people couldn't sign 40-50 books or they wouldn't get any seaming done!
• page(s) with the first name and city of each person that sent squares.  Obviously I've been keeping an ongoing list on the blog as packages come in but I've also been keeping a database with this information so I can easily print a list.

The originals of all the above will be made into an album/binder and presented to the City of Greensburg (if they want it) to memorialize this project and the tornado that they'll never forget.  I would guess there are people there who are keeping track of newspaper articles, etc, regarding the tornado and keeping a historical record of the details surrounding the event.

As you might have noticed, I didn't do a blog post yesterday.  Sorry if anyone was disappointed.  We did get mail!  But guess what.  I didn't open it until today.  I'm trying hard not to let the afghan project take over my life (too late, really) so I did a few other things during the babies' nap, like fill bird feeders, put up my hummingbird feeders, and wash the inside and outside of my kitchen windows.  This is not something I have done yet at this house (I know, I'm a terrible person) and it's just incredible how much prettier the world is through clean windows.  :)

And you know what?!  There was NO afghan mail at the church today!!  So I guess I was given a little breather by the USPS.  And I opened yesterday's mail today. 

Today's correspondence included a card for the families of Greensburg that made me stop.  Made me freeze in place for a moment and ponder the greatness of the simple words she wrote.  Jan in Arlington, Virginia, sent a postcard with a Sunshine and Shadow quilt on the front (I think of it as Trip Around The World) and this note written on the back:

Such a small thing - a stranger stitching some squares to be joined by other strangers with squares made by other strangers.

I hope our collective efforts give you physical, emotional and spiritual warmth.  So many of us care what happens to you and yours.

We can't know exactly how you feel, the struggles you have gone through, the struggles still to go.

I hope as you enjoy this blanket, you feel the love and hopes that these strangers stitched together - all for you.

It's a hug from the knitters who can't be there in person and we hope it brings you comfort.

Jan - Arlington, Virginia

Jan's postcard to the families of Greensburg:

I could just cry reading that.  It's the sentiment that I think every single person knitting for, crocheting for, or reading about this project wants to convey to the families in Greensburg.  Jan - you said it so well.  Thank you so very much.

So today we're adding another 57 squares to the total, bringing us to a whopping 1602 squares received (OVER 1600!!!!!  WooHoo!) and 638 needed to reach the 40'ghan goal.  Wow it would be awesome to make more than 40 afghans.  New secret wish = 50.  But really I just don't see how I could "up" the goal again.  More than 40 is awesome no matter how many it might be!

For those of you who have offered to send yarn for seaming, I'll just say that I've contacted some people (just one company so far) in the yarn world and hopefully I'll soon have good news in the way of donated yarn for seaming.  Keep your fingers crossed for me, okay?  :)

Today's (er.... yesterday's) blocks came from the following people:

• Kate - South Natick, MA (2nd package from you Kate?!)
• Marry - St. Andrews, SCOTTLAND, UK (WooHoo! - lovely note and beautiful squares - thank you Marry!)
• Anonymous - SINGAPORE!  (2nd package from this anonymous person!  THANK YOU!)
• Jan - Arlington, VA
• Lori - Petoskey, MI (Lori, have you been reading Lynne's blog?  Hmm? Thank you for the sweet surprise!)
• Barb - Harrisburg, PA
• Jen - Austin, TX
• Maureen - Barrington, NH
• Debbie - Justin, TX
• Suzanne - Seattle, WA (4th... 5th.... how many have you sent now Suzanne!?  A bunch!!)
• Jean - Winona, MN
• JoAnn - Mount Pearl, NL, CANADA!!!  People - I spent two days completely stumped about the abbreviation "NL" in Canada.  I was trying SO HARD not to have to look at a map to find it!  And then I finally broke down - I got out the atlas.  Uhhh... where?  Huh?  What?  What the heck? I searched.... I looked.  There's no NL in Canada.  But wait... oh yes, there is.  Hanging out in the middle of the frigid sea where they surely use cats and yarn for insulating their homes.... is Newfoundland and Laborador!!!  Y'all, this lady lives on a teeny peninsula on a very smallish island on the east coast of Canada where it's nearly the arctic circle and makes Kelly in New Brunswick look like she has tropical weather!!  JoAnn sent a hilarious letter with her four sweetly knit little squares.  She states that she measured wrong (you're not the only one JoAnn!) so her squares came out very small - more like 6" square rather than the requested 8"!!  She suggested they could be made into CAT BLANKETS because surely there are homeless cats in the wee villiage of Greensburg, Kansas.  hehe  Have no fear JoAnn, your squares will be used and loved.  Possibly by cats and surely by their people.  :) 

Guess what y'all!?  I've been knitting.  Yep, knitting.  For the Spun Stitches knitalong.  I haven't put up a button or a link.  I haven't posted on their blog!  But I've been doing it because I was so inspired - by.... yes, their lovely buttons which I have not put in the sidebar yet.  Can you believe it?  Anyway, here's proof.

   

I can hardly believe it but I have knit all the yarn but the last two skeins in the photo above.  Those two were spun and the first skein plied when I was at Estes Park so that's pretty special to me.  When I look at this lumpy blob in my lap I wonder what I was thinking when I spun the yarn so crazy.  This was a great look with the Argosy scarf... but this shawl?  The jury is still out but I'm really thinking it's perfect for its intended purpose.  The next time you see this shawl it'll be finished and hopefully blocked.  I'll tell you then why I had to make it and who it's for.  :)

Last but not least, did you know that today is Dale's birthday?  Dale is the husband of one of my favorite blogging friends, Carole.  A lot of you know (of) them.  I enjoy getting to know the families of my blog friends (husbands, children, pets, gardens, communities) so it's very nice that Carole shares a lot of her time with Dale and tells us all about it.  When the girls saw the video of Dale singing on Carole's blog they wanted to wish him a Happy Birthday too!

Everybody have a great rest of your week and I'll be back with another afghan update!  I might take Wednesday off for an administrative maintenance day for the afghan project.  I have some emails to write (to "people in the yarn world") and also need to get current with the data entry.  Maybe I'll have the map updated too!  Yay! (don't worry - you haven't even seen the map yet - I've never been current with it yet!)  Have a Happy Week!  :)