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. :)

Winner of the Blanket for Jester's Project

Today Jester's IGP was fully funded! Thank you to Camille who stepped up and made such a generous contribution to close out the project. And thank you so much to everyone who supported Jester. He and his family now have hope for an improved lifestyle. Thank you all!!!!

Now to choose a winner of the handmade crochet blanket I made for Jester's Project!



I arranged this giveaway along the same lines as the one I did for Nyslin's Project. Every donation from $1-$5 was assigned a number. I came up with 113 numbers.

1-2 Dee
3-6 Efrain
7-8 Holly
9-10 Su
11-16 Kayara
17-26 Jim and Mack
27-31 Heather M
32-37 Steve
38-40 Robyn
41-44 Cherise
45-48 Tamara
49-52 Wilfredo
53-54 bsem130
55-64 Efrain
65-113 Camille

I plugged the numbers into the Random Number Generator and the winning number was chosen.



The winning number is #32 which belongs to Steve! Congratulations Steve! I will contact you and get your blanket to you ASAP.

I can't wait to hear from Jester when he receives the news of his IGP. He will "jump for surprise" (as he said in another letter). Jester waited two years before finding a sponsor and he has never failed to express how grateful he is to finally have that relationship with us. I'm really looking forward to sharing the updates and photos I receive of the progress of his project.

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!!

Pretend You Never Saw This Post

Whatever you do, please do not go over to this blog:

Old Red Barn Co.

and please do not enter the contest to win any of these stunningly beautiful quilts.



Because the less you enter the more chance there is for me to win! And I am one greedy-free-quilt-wanting-blogger. :)

Just wanted to make sure we all had that straight. :)