Chance to Support Knitters in the Third World

I ran across this Kiva loan that should appeal to all the knitters out there:

http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=118403&_tpos=1&_tpg=1

It's for a group in Bolivia that produces hand and machine knitwear. They still need quite a bit of money to fund their loan.

I love funding craft groups in Bolivia. It's been my experience that they pay the money back very quickly. So if you've been thinking about joining Kiva now would be a great time!

Lesly's Birthday Presents and Other Updates*

Whew! Summer has well and truly kicked in around here. Mother Nature finally stopped with the incessant rain she'd been pouring on us for literally a month, and now has decided to try to sweat us all to death instead! It's 90 degrees and humid. Ick.

The school to summer transition has settled down so I can catch up on what's been going on since my last post....

The hideous heat hasn't stopped me from working on a ginormous knitted blanket though. I'm always so out of sync with the knitting seasons... sigh.

Last week I knit two (of four planned) large log cabin blocks and of course promptly changed my mind about how I want the blanket to look. So I've switched over and begun a log-cabin-of-many-colors blanket. This one will be a single, huge log cabin block and will hopefully use up most of my stash of Elann Sonata. That stuff is excellent for blankets.

Speaking of blankets - Mike who won the blanket for Nyslin's project requested that I donate the blanket to a charity. I chose Project Linus. I'm sure that my blog friends already know about Project Linus but I'll include the link anyway. I dropped the blanket off with the local chapter last weekend.

And Steve, who won Jester's project blanket, says he has received the blanket it looks good in his apartment.

So it's been happy blanketyness all round. :)

And in more good news my Income Generating Project for Joey over at Aura's House has been fully funded!! Thank you!! Thank you!! Joey's family of six somehow gets by on only $21 a month. Joey's family has the least income of all my sponsor children. And he is the only one of the children that is sponsored so he is the only one that gets the medical, health and educational benefits of sponsorship. Raising and selling hogs will make a huge impact on their income.

And the good news just keeps on coming because Kanika's project is completed as well. One of the other super sponsors, Dana, had the brilliant idea of holding a raffle. She raised hundreds of dollars for Kanika in the blink of an eye! Way to go Dana! I don't know yet how Children International and Kanika's family will use the money. Hopefully they will be able to at least start re-building their house. We will probably have to raise more money for Kanika in the long run but at least the family can get some significant relief right now.

We also recently received these adorable pictures of Lesly showing us what she bought with her birthday money that we sent. I love how she is nearly swamped by all the groceries in the first photo. It's sort of a Lesly version of "Where's Waldo". :)


Lesly with the spoils of her birthday shopping spree.

We should be getting an update on the progress of Lesly's roof project any time now. I can't wait!!


I just love Lesly's Cheshire Cat smile!

I talked about this in my last post but I've been thinking some more this past week about what my next step will be for my sponsor kids after I get all of their Income Generating Projects in place. So far I have funded (or am funding) projects for:

1.Harry
2.Maica
3.Jhonny
4.Lesly
5.Nyslin
6.Joey
7.Hermelinda (2)
8.Zoila
9.Ana
10.Jester

I have proposals in the works for:
1.Jenie
2.Glenn
3.Mary Joy
4.Flor
5.Javiera (special needs)
6.Carla
7. And hopefully and additional housing project for Hermelinda.

I'm also teaming up on a project for Alison with my sister who sponsor's Alison's brother Jhonathan.

I can probably get most of these projects launched by the end of this year. That's my goal anyway! After that, I am thinking I will concentrate on making sure that all the children have adequate bathroom facilities. Some of them do already but most of them share a community latrine. It would be much healthier of they each had their own - can you imagine not having a bathroom? I can't.

I have nothing in the works yet for my three newest sponsor children. I have to get to know them and their families better before I can determine what their needs might be. I'm sure I will end up doing an IGP for those three families as well sometime in the future.

And lastly - I finally feel like my eyes have gotten adjusted to the contacts. Now I can "See the world in HD" just like that annoying TV commercial... I've gotten pretty good at putting them in easily. Taking them out is harder but I'm starting to get the hang of it.

There you go. Those are all the updates I can think of/have time for right now. What have all of you been doing??

*If you are looking for creative blog post titles I'm afraid you are in the wrong place. :)

Hexagon Blanket for Ana's Project

As promised - here is the blanket I will be giving away for Ana's Project over at Aura's House.



Ana's Income Generating Project is going very well - slowly but surely getting there!



I've been told that Aura's House is exploring the idea of beginning buying some of the tools Ana's father Luis will need for his workshop rather than waiting for all of the money to come in. I'll let you know if that happens.



In the meantime - about the blanket...



I used hand dyed sock weight yarn from various Etsy artists. The subtle variations in the colors are really beautiful. I especially like the grey because it has so much depth.



And the "green" is also brown, blue and bits of other colors as well.



I had fun crocheting this. I had never tried hexagons before. And the bobbles were new to me too. I like the texture they add.



The blanket is a comfy lap size - perfect for TV watching and otherwise lazing about on the couch. :)



The giveaway will work just like the one I did for Nyslin's Project. Every donation up to $5 gets it's own number. When Ana's Project is fully funded I will have a random number generator choose the winning number.

Good luck!! And thank you again to everyone who has so generously helped my sponsor children. Check back again soon as I have some beautiful new photos of Ana to post!

Winner of Blanket for Nyslin's Project

Okay here we go!

I sorted out all the donations that were made to Nyslin's project. After subtracting any donations made by my relatives - :) I assigned a number for each of the remaining $1-5 increments. I came up with 101 numbers. I entered the number range into the random number generator and ......

The winning number for the Crazy Colors Blanket for Nyslin's Project was:



#95! which belongs to Mike E.

Congratulations Mike E. I hope you will enjoy your new blanket!



Thank you to everyone who donated. I wish I had a million hands and a million skeins of yarn (my stash is big - but not that big!) to crochet blankets for each and every person who supported Nyslin's project - and my other kids as well.

Stay tuned though because I do have something to giveaway for Ana's project as well!!

One Finished Blanket

I've got some photos of a baby blanket I finished crocheting a few months ago and never got round to posting...mainly because Hubby took half of the photos of the wrong side of the blanket. Ooops!

Oh well...here it is anyway.

Edging, right side.



The border, wrong side.



The border, right side.



All folded up, wrong side.



The only shot I have of the whole thing. Unfortunately it shows the wrong side. :(



Oh well. At least I've illustrated that crochet does indeed have a wrong and a right side. Crochet's wrong side is a little less "wrong" than knitting's wrong side. But still, wrong is wrong. Right? :)

I've packed this up and sent it off to little Alison Nicol that I introduced on the blog a few days ago. It's just the right size to make a snuggly blankie for a two year old. I hope she likes it.

Edges of Squares

So let's see...where were we? Oh yeah, squares.

Today I give you edges of squares. :)







Today I'm thinking about:
How ominous a helicopter overhead sounds,
What to do about Indy,
Starting a new (and expensive hobby),
Taking a sewing class,
Making Chinese bread in the steamer.

Oh - and I've lost 12 pounds so far. I think actually more but I won't really know until the good ole PMS passes. Drat that water weight! Violet's mama says I should reward myself for losing weight by doing something fun that I haven't gotten to do for a long time. Unfortunately that would be...eat. Eat really, really fattening Mexican food. At this point if I ate food that calorie and fat laden it would probably just make me sick. So I've got to come up with something else....

Stacks of Squares

Continuing with my showcase of squares, here are some photos of stacks of squares. I particularly like the first one.





I'm still enjoying this project but it is starting to reach the slightly overwhelming slog point. I'm starting to yearn for some knitting and thinking about sweaters and yummy wooly fall weather things. So I am working really hard on this crochet so I can finish before the magic wears off and I end up with a HUGE UFO pile.

Currently I've got the basis for at least three blankets, and right now I am doing some more crocheting of certain colors to "fill in" what I think the blankets need. I'm able to complete a whole sewn up four quarters patch in about a day and a half. I'd say I'm about 75% finished. That seems like a pretty good number - but when you are working on three blankets at once you realize there is still quite a ways to go. :(

At least I when I finish I will have three blankets completed "all at once". :)

More Sewn Up Patches

Here are a few more examples of what the patches turn out like once they are sewn up. The color is all washed out on these for some reason...and I also think that Hubby accidentally took pictures of the backside of all but the first patch so they look slightly weird...but you get the idea at least.



This one is going in the "crazy" colors blanket.



This one will either go with the "crazies" or the "normal", haven't decided yet.



This one goes in the big blanket.



I think this one will also go in the big blanket. I'm hoping for a king size on the finished blanket. I will likely be keeping that one! The other two blankets are for a charity project which I will tell more about later.

I used the other Flickr blog function for this post. It's better I think! Hubby described how to used it in the comments section of the previous "squares" related post. I also took every one's advice and cleaned up the sidebar. Don't worry Carrie, I kept the reading list. :)

ETA: Whew - I fixed the picture sizes so that they aren't ginormous! That was like the attack of the killer photos! I don't know folks, I may be too old to figure out this new fangled Flickr technology. :)

One of the Nicer Things

You may remember that last year I mailed a lady named Jo-Anne a big old box of yarn odds and ends. Around Thanksgiving Jo-Anne sent me this picture of the bears she makes from all of the donated yarn. These bears went to children in Hati.

Getting this picture was one of the nicest things that has happened lately. I think it must be my good yarn karma coming back to me just when I needed a little mood booster. And all I had to do was mail some leftover yarn - Jo-Anne does all the hard work!

If you have some odds and ends kicking around that you's like to donate, you can contact Jo-Anne by clicking on her name.

Blanket of Hope

These are the mitered squares that I sent to the Blanket of Hope:





There are four squares but only these two colorways. Both are Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sport.

Ahhhh....Spring Cleaning

The blog not the house!

I overhauled the sidebar yesterday. Man that felt good! I was really surprised at how out of date my list of blogs that I read was. Tons of blogs that I have been reading FOREVER weren't even on there. Chris, Carrie, Mrs. Pao, Marina, Jessie, Laura...sheesh. I mean really, as if I could be happy in blogland without reading those blogs! There were many more which I added to list. If I comment on your blog but your blog is not on my sidebar list - it's just because I am an idiot, not because I don't love you. :) My eyes were seriously starting to get blurry by the end of the overhaul. I had to put on my glasses! Don't be shy - drop me an email if I have forgotten to list your blog.

My squares have found a good home. They will be going to Knit Knack for her Blanket of Hope that she is making for a friend who has cancer. I can't wait to see the finished blanket!

Lastly, in bird news: I peeked in on the two "rescued" chicks that Neville had tossed. Godric and Minerva have done a great job raising them. I was very excited to see that the first chick looks like it will be green backed - the normal coloring for a Gouldian - believe it or not this will be my first green backed baby! I was even more excited when I saw the second baby - wow! It is definitely not green. It is a soft powdery grey. So I'm thinking either another blue or some sort of pastel/dilute. This baby is much lighter grey than Harry Potter was as a baby. But it's not as light as the silver baby (which I lost) from the first clutch. So - another exciting "wait and see".

Plus - Godric is doggedly brooding a clutch of three eggs! I had intended to take away the nest after these two babies fledged but I guess Godric had other ideas. Three clutches a year for a pair is okay - but I like to do less. Well - I had wondered why Godric was still hanging out in the nest so much with those almost grown babies - and now I know. I am a bit skeptical about the prospects of these eggs actually hatching under these circumstances but I guess we will see.

Also - Neville and Rowena are on clutch number two. I hope they decide to raise these ones rather than pitch them! Ron Weasley and Rosmerta are on their first clutch as well. These two couples share a cage - so we will see how that works out. No action from Harry Potter and Jenny Weasley yet. I think there won't be any eggs from them this year. They still don't seem very interested in each other in general. Dang. I may have to try them each with a different partner next year.

Hopefully photos of all of this activity later.....