Feeding the Hungry

Hello friends -

My mother, Darlene, has been raising funds to feed the hungry of Livingston County and southeast Michigan for over 15 years. The unemployment rate and economy of Michigan, coupled with disasters in other areas of our country (which diverts donations outside of our region), have left Gleaners in a difficult position; they are in danger of not meeting their budgetary needs. Many of the people they feed are children.

My mom has taught me that being a good citizen means helping others and being good to our planet. Because I can feed my children and meet their most basic needs for nutritious food and a clean bed, I am richer than many of my neighbors. I hope you will join me in supporting her current fund raising effort, detailed in the below e-mail.

"Paulauski, Darlene" wrote:

Subject: My campaign for Gleaners
Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2007 09:40:16 -0400
From: "Paulauski, Darlene"

Dear Friends and Family Members,

As you probably know, I have the honor of working in the development department at Gleaners to raise funds on behalf of our hungry neighbors in southeast Michigan . I am usually writing grants or corporate solicitations, but everyone in the development department has been asked to come up with creative ideas to help raise funds so we can meet our budget for our fiscal year ending June 30. I decided to do a friends and family campaign via e-mail.

I hope you will help make it successful with a generous gift or pledge! My goal is to raise $10,000. I ask that after you make your gift that you also ask one or more of your friends or family members to contribute by forwarding my email to them along with your personal note. If you haven’t participated in a “viral” campaign before, you will be surprised at how generously people respond. I need your help to reach my goal, so please consider asking a friend or family member.

Our entire region in southeast Michigan is really struggling, and I would be grateful for your help.

Please click on the Donate Now button or link below to make a gift by credit card or call 866-GLEANERS, ext 241. You may also mail your gift to Gleaners, 2131 Beaufait, Detroit MI 48207. And if you can’t donate right now, your pledge will count toward our current budget.

Please mention Darlene’s Campaign in the comment section if you donate online or on your check in the memo section.

Many thanks in advance for your help!

Darlene
313-923-3535, ext 242
www.gcfb.org

Slowly but surely

My WIPs are getting bigger. Not much to see, but the swallowtail shawl is getting longer, as is the cardigan. Progress on the shawl is much improved now that I have a pair of the new Addi lace needles. I knew they'd be great for overall lace knitting, but I wasn't sure if they'd work for the nupps on swallowtail. I'd been using my 0000 DPN for the purl-5-together bane, but now I can use the working lace needle for that technique and it's much faster. Still, I really have to focus on each row, and I haven't had much focus time lately.

I spent a lot of time in a car over the holiday weekend with our trip to Elkhorn, Wisconsin, so the cardigan grew a few inches. Nice because until now, I'd only worked on it during American Idol, and during the season finale I realized that I might not finish the sweater. Between the boring stockinette and the horrible slippery cotton, AI was the only thing that made this thing bearable. The car trip was good for its progress, and now I can hopefully finish it during So You Think You Can Dance :)

I know I won't get much done this week, as our neighborhood garage sale is this week and we have a lot of preparation to do. I've committed with to nightly effort after the kids go to bed. Maybe next week I'll get to cast something off!

Gonna knock you off your feet

I'm taking a big step today. Something I haven't done in years. I'm casting on a pair of socks with yarn from my stash. Seriously.

I'm really proud of myself. I even -get this- got over the little twitch in my eye when I realized I'd only have enough sock yarn left to make 11 pairs. I really like even sets of things - pairs, dozens, etc. But I wound the yarn and cast on anyway. Yay me!

Just a few minutes later, the mail carrier arrived with 3 more pairs of sock yarn. Instant karma?


That's a skein of Fleece Artist and 2 colors of Northern Sunshine Designs, a nice shop in Canada where I received excellent service, beautiful yarn, and some very nice sock patterns from Darlene (go to her site, she has some great free patterns too). Here's a close-up of the Fleece Artist:

I don't like Mondays

If by Mondays you mean mercerized cotton. This stuff is the suck to work with. It's so slippery that I have to tug every single stitch, which is impossible to do evenly every time. If I were in the round, that would be manageable, but since knits and purls slant differently, my stockinette stitch looks like crap. I have made some progress, past the underarms and nothing but st st for a good 10" more.

Two years in the making

I cast 64 stitches on for these simple ribbed socks two years ago. They were my first socks, and I used Koigu and US1 needles. The first sock took forever. I used to think ribbing was so difficult. (can you hear me whining in italics?) But when I turned that first heel, I fell in love with the magic of knitting socks. I've made many other pairs since then, for other people, but of course these socks for me have languished. Just like the fresh fruit that I don't think I am entitled to eat as it is for the kids, I'm also not entitled to hand-knit socks. NOT ANYMORE SUCKERS! I'm going to eat fresh strawberries AND knit stuff for myself and ~get this~ DRINK HOT COFFEE. All you kids can bite me cuz mama is hungry and tired and her feet are cold!

So we went to a gymnastics birthday party today for children from 3-5 years old. I know enough about gymnastics events to know that you have to take your shoes off (not going to be embarrassed about the state of my feet or socks at another one of those again!) so how fantastic for me to wear my very own pair of lovely socks? Yay!!!

I did show them off and mention a few times that *hey I knit these* but only one other knitter was there and she was nice enough to compliment me every time I begged for recognition.

Besides the wonderful feeling of putting these on, I really appreciate how much faster the second one was knit - I've really come a long way!

New Books!

No new yarn yet this week (some Mountain Colors sock yarn may have snuck its way in but I turned a blind eye, and hope you will too) but I do have 2 new books: the beautiful Poems of Color that I ordered directly from Interweave Press (Amazon had a 3-week delay, but was cheaper) and, from my LYS, Knitting Beyond the Basics. This little gem has lovely patterns that are interesting, challenging, classic knits. There is a beaded lace tank that is begging me to be cast on, and a great selection of sweaters as well. I just noticed that there aren't any reviews posted about the book on Amazon. Does that mean I am the first to buy it?!?

On a side note, I'd like to thank my neighbor for waking me and my sick kid up at 6:45 this morning. Not only do your dogs bark all day, and your teenage boys yak it up all night, but now you are mowing your lawn at 7am. It's great that you can cover all the time slots. Those pesky quiet periods were really getting to me. Silly old me thought I'd be able to enjoy fresh air and open windows between the hours of 1AM and 8AM!

The problem with too many WIPs...

is that they all move so slowly. No pics to post today, just a musing about why I do things the way that I do. I have stalled projects all over the place, and yet didn't even pause to cast on the Swallowtail Shawl from IK Fall 06. To have 2 lace projects going while also working a beaded bag with intense finishing needs and a looming deadline, not to mention the summer cardigan that must be finished before the season to wear it ends, add to that an unfinished sock, which needs about one inch and then a toe and then can be enjoyed with its long-finished mate, and OH! let's not mention the sock yarn, patterns, and lace-weight that just piled its way into my stash (if I put it away then I can forget that I bought it and don't have to feel bad about it), and my this sentence has gotten away from me... MY POINT: my knitting is all over the place, taking over the house, and nothing is being finished because new things keep casting on. My problem is not with that.

My problem is with my sadness over my limited knitting time... there are so many things that I want to make, to work on, patterns and books and things waiting for me to cast them on, and it seems a shame to be unable to do so. I sacrifice as much sleep as I can, and that gives me about 4 hours a night to knit, if I totally ignore my home, which I do. Some nights I get caught up on the Internet or shopping or pattern browsing and that limits me even further. I know that some day, my children will be old enough for me to knit with them around, or even for them to leave the house without me, and I will have a lot more time then. I don't want to rush their growing up - it's going so fast already with Jackson - so I must find a way to reconcile my desire to cast on and knit things with my motherhood role.

I am in love with the Silken Spencer jacket in this '06 fall IK. I think that may be next. After the beaded bag, summer cardi, and koigu sock. Everything else can bite me.