Thursday, November 12, 2009

Time flies when you are ...having fun....

Thanksgiving Cactus 2009


....and being very busy. My last post was August 22nd. I really can't believe it's been that long. My only excuse is that I've been busy. Yes, I've been knitting and cleaning. More cleaning than I've done in awhile I hate to say. The reason....my son's approaching wedding....this coming Saturday. Yikes! He gave his girl a ring around the time of my last post and then almost immediately to our surprise there was a wedding in the works! They are having a very small wedding, but there is, nevertheless, a lot to do. I can't believe it's almost here! I'm very happy for them that everything fell into place. They just want to be together! Since they are having such a small wedding we will have a family party for them the weekend after Thanksgiving, so even though the wedding will be over, I'm still not in the clear for a little while :)

Besides cleaning I have been knitting, but I'll have to wait and show you what I've knit for the most part later. I will try to be a little better about timely posts in the future. I just think I got out of the habit of posting and reading blogs. I never seem to have enough time to do everything I want to do. I did make time this past Sunday to go into Boston with a group of women in my church to the 3rd Annual Knit-a-thon for the Pine Street Inn. A very worth while cause. You can read about the Pine Street Inn here.

In total, the five of us brought with us 329 squares! That's about 9 and 1/2 blankets worth!! These were all knit by the ladies in our church and some even came from the Senior Center. I didn't knit as many as I usually do. Here are my squares:

I made only eleven this year, but we were able as a team to sew together one blanket and about 2/3rds of a second one. Sewing the blankets together is very labor intensive, but it is a labor of love. One of the women brought that one unfinished blanket home to finish and some of us including myself brought home a bag full of squares to complete a blanket. Here's my pile of squares:
During the time we were there (from about eleven in the morning until about 3:30pm) around thirty something blankets were finished. It was very impressive to see all the finished blankets.

This was my first time going into Boston for the event and I found it very interesting about how they go about constructing the blankets. When you arrive you hand over all your squares. Then they sort the squares in regards to color and whether or not they are hand or machine washable. Your group is then given 35 squares to sew into a blanket. First we had to sew the squares into 5 rows of seven squares. None of my squares were in either of the two blankets that we put together, but I was determined to find some of my squares in the bunch of squares that I selected to take home to do later. Two of mine were in the pile! Yay :) My collection of take home squares are quite the miss mash of different weights and sizes of squares. I hope it will go together nicely, but no mater what it looks like in the end, one thing I do know for certain is that it will be warm

Before I left I bought a tote bag
Next year when I make my squares I'll have the perfect project bag. Hopefully I'll be able to go again next year....it was a lot of fun. One thing we anticipate doing perhaps next year is to do a little prep work ahead of time. Have a night at our church before the event to sew some of our squares into strips, so that we might be able to make some blankets with more of the squares from our church family. Wouldn't that be nice? Of course I forgot my camera. I wish I could show you our completed blankets, but I will keep you posted with the one I'll be working on at home. Here is one of the blankets finished, not ours though.

Hopefully once things settle down I'll be able to get back to some regular blog reading and writing. In the meantime I do hope all of you are happily knitting away. I'm anxious to see what all of you have been up to!! Until next time.....

9 comments:

  1. very nice squares for a good cause!

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  2. Congratulations to your son. Hope he and his bride have a wonderful day!

    The squares look very nice. Can't wait to see them all put together.

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  3. Congrats to your son! I hope all goes well for his big day.

    You are so nice to go into Boston and work on the blankets for the Pine St Inn. They are certainly going to need them soon!

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  4. Congrats to your son!
    Love your Christmas cactus. I've had one for decades and it isn't thriving as well as yours, ever since we moved to the new house.

    WOW, y'all knocked out a lot of blankets! Very cool. Too bad you forgot your camera, I would have loved to see photos of them.

    It's good to see you blogging again. I understand completely how life gets busy, I had a little break in blogging & blog reading too (long story) and am just trying to get back into it again.

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  5. how funny is that--i was thinking about emailing you to see how the wedding planning was going because i had remembered that it was this month! :) hope we get to see some pics! ohh, your christmas cactus looks great! you inspired me to get my mom a couple last christmas and hers are doing pretty well. i love the orange flowers! what a great totebag you received from the knitathon! goodness, eleven squares is plenty to me! :)

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  6. Congratulations to your son and his soon bride! I wish them a wonderful day tomorrow.

    Cool knitathon! And your squares are beautiful, of course.

    You're missed in blogland, but the break is tee-totally understandable.
    Have a great weekend!

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  7. Glad to see you! Congrats to your son, and I hope the wedding goes smoothly.

    The blankets are very cool - such a nice thing to do (and have some fun in the process!).

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  8. Thanks for posting this charity. They seem, from the front cover anyway, to give homeless people some dignity. I am in love. When I was homeless, I would have loved something like this as I am still adjusting in some ways. This is a really cool charity. Do they take donations year round?

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  9. Nice to see you!!!

    Hugs!

    btw - life has been NUTS lately. Ugh.

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Thank you all for your comments! I really appreciate them. I usually don't follow up with an email, but if you do have a question please make sure you include a way to reach you within your comment so I may answer your question. Thanks and happy knitting :)

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