Blithering Knitiot

Project Linus

Last February my high school chorus sponsored a Project Linus "Make a Blanket Day", and since I promised quite a while ago that I would share some pics of the blankets that were made, here you are.  These blankets were knitted and crocheted by a local knitter's group.  This sweet bunch of women meets every Tuesday morning at a local library, and when I contacted them to see if they would be interesting in making a couple of blankets, they heartily agreed.  What I ended up with was 35 blankets of all sizes, including one spectacular quilt!  These women went above and beyond the call of duty, and they were so proud of the things they made - and they should be!  I think the photos speak for themselves.











And one of my favorites - little piggie heads and tails:



These are just the blankets from the knitter's group.  The kids made lots of fleece blankets - you know, the ones with the tied edges - there are about 60 of them.  So, almost 100 blankets to donate to one of the local Project Linus Chapters!  More pics of the blankets here.

As I was taking pictures this evening, Lizzie thought it a good idea to stay out of the way, so she went to her favorite place to be in the warmer weather - the roof of the front porch.  There's a railing around it, so she's claimed it for her own:



I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

It's been a little hectic...

Well hello there!  I can't believe it's been a month since my last post.  And what have I been up to?  No knitting.  Well, not much, but we'll get around to that...

So my kids had their high school production of "She Loves Me".  It was awesome, if I do say so myself.  In a nutshell, it was the right play for this group of kids.  I had options for casting, which was all put to rights during auditions, and it really did become the little Valentine of a musical that it was intended to be.  We also had an adjudication from the Theatre Association of New York State (TANYS), which was a great learning experience for us all.  An adjudication basically is a critique by a trained adjudicator, which looks at ALL the aspects of the production, from the printed program to the lighting, set design, props, costumes, music and acting.  We were given two roving adjudicator awards, one for our lead actor for his performance, and the second award was for the printed program (Since the plot involved annonymous letters to "Dear Friend", the program was written as a letter and was even in a matching pink envelope!).  So, the adjudicator liked that little detail a lot.  The scripts have since sent back, the costumes and props and sets were put away, and another musical came to an end.

We also had another Project Linus event in February.  We have over 100 blankets to donate to the cause this year, and the kids and a local knitters group did an outstanding job!  I'll post some pics this coming week.  One of my favorite blankets this year is a crocheted baby blanket with little blocks of pig faces alternating with blocks of pig tails!  It's just too adorable!

The kids and I spent a Saturday afternoon a couple of weeks ago cleaning out the costume room at school.  actually, we started to clean it out - there's so much to do that it's going to take several days to get it finished.  We threw out 8 garbage bags of old clothing that was falling apart or unusable.  It made quite a nice dent in what needs to be accomplished.

Today was our annual Spring Concert.  The kids did an outstanding job.  I've had bigger choruses than this one, but the sound these kids have is really special and well blended.  The sang the spiritual "Every Time I Fell the Spirit", "The Road Not Taken" by Randall Thompson, and "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" by PDQ Bach.  We also recognize our seniors at this concert, which usually involves a little gift and a speech of some sort.  The speech went very well, and then the seniors take over and give a gift to their director.  Well, one of my little "off color" saying that the kids find amusing is when I talk about discipline and say something like "use a brick, don't hurt your hand".  Their first gift to me was a brick that they all had signed.  And the second gift, since I had been knitting at musical rehearsals this year (and I can't believe how it helped me to concentrate on what they were doing onstage - very interesting), they got me the book "Stitch & Bitch" by Debbie Stoller.  The funny thing was that they really couldn't say the title of the book on front of hundreds of people - they can be shy at times.  Not very often, but it does happen on ocaission.  So, I have a brick, a new knitting book, and I've been outed as a knitter to the community by my kids.  The Board of Ed. members at the concert were very amused - and very congratulatory about the kids work.  It was a good day.

Oh, and the mohair shawl?  After doing a little ripping out, I decided to put it away for a little bit.  Ripping out mohair is not a pleasant task, and I think that will have to happen in small amounts.  But I did start another one in reds, rusts and oranges.  I'll be a little more careful this time....

I hope you all are doing well.  It looks like spring might actually be paying us a visit.  Enjoy your Monday!

I'm back...

Hey there.  It's been a long time, hasn't it?  The play is over, it went VERY well, even with the weather being awful and canceling Friday night's performance and doing a Sunday mantinee instead, it all worked out well and the kids did a great job.  Most of this past week was spent coming home to walk Lizzie and then crawling into bed.  I think I've finally caught up on sleep, and life is starting to get back to a place where I can begin to take care of myself again.  Everything seems to take a back seat to a production when I start directing.  I need to find a way to balance things in the future...

Today was spent in Syracuse doing some shopping with my friend Maggie, and we delivered the 57 baby blankets (yes, 57 blankets!!!) to Bev, the Project Linus coordinator for the Syracuse area.  It was such a good feeling to get them to her, and I'm thinking we will certainly do another "Make a Blanket Day" event next February, and I'm also thinking the we may even do one in the fall.  This is what the trunk of my car looked like before meeting up with Bev:

That's it for now.  I hope you all have been behaving, and hopefully the next time I post I may have some knitting content to show.  We'll see...  *wink*

Saturday

It's been a crazy week.  Which is odd since we had the week off from school for President's Day/Week.  I spent most of it at school rehearsing the kids for thier upcoming performance of "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown".  It's going very well, and sets are being built, costumes are almost done, the program is almost finished and ready to go to the printer, and other various and sundry things are well underway if not completed.  It's been an exhausting week.  And on top of it, most of the kids in the cast are involved with the Odyssey of the Mind Competition, so they have been working in their groups getting skits ready for the regional competition which is today at a local college, so they must be much more tired than I.  But then again, maybe not - they're teenegers and well, I'm not.  And haven't been for several decades....

I finally got the pics downloaded from the Project Linus Make a Blanket Day we did at school last Saturday.  I have about 25 blankets ready to donate to one of the local chapters.  Never having organized such an event before and not knowing what to expect, it was actually a very pleasant day.  We had about 35 people show up during the day to make a blanket - adults as well as kids.  There were quilters, knitters (four members of a local knitting group), crocheters, and many people made fleece blankets (you know the ones, where you put two layers of fleece material together, cut strips in the edges and then tie them together).  It was pretty cool to watch everyone get to work making their blankets, but also the commeraderie in the room was truly special.  A couple of the teenegers were knitting (and I was really pleased at the number of kids who knew how to knit - I guess it's not as much a lost craft with the young ones as I thought) and getting pointers from the ladies of the knitting group (and they invited the kids to knit with them at their weekly meetings, which I thought was really awesome!).   So, it also became a kind of a bonding thing as well between people of all ages.  Even bonding between kids who normally don't hang together were helping each other to make blankets, share stories, and laugh.  Yeah, there was a lot of laughter during the day as well.  And food.  LOTS of food - we asked people to bring a dish to pass, and that they did.  No one went way hungry.

So, here are a couple pics of the final blankets.  It was a fun day, with a lot of comfort to give to little ones in need.

Have a great day.

Saturday Sky

Beautiful day in CNY.  Temp was in the upper 20's, maybe even in the lower 30's - it felt like a heatwave and the sun was just brilliant all day. 

We also hosted a Project Linus event today at school.  Overall, we had about 30 adults and students making blankets for children who are ill and in need of a little comfort.  By the end of the day we had 25 blankets, and a few more to be finished and delivered in the next week or so.   So, it was a very busy day, and once I've organized all the pics I took of the blankets and the fun we had making them, I'll post some of them and a little more about the day's event.   Have a great night!