Free-for-all Friday: Sweaters to Blankets

It's been a week of illness in our house and I don't even mean the cancer-related variety. We've had food poisoning (my husband and I, thankfully not the baby), fevers, lots of runny noses, and now pink-eye. My husband and I cried over taking our little boy to daycare, but he's barely been there. Needless to say, I haven't done much of anything except wipe noses and eyes and snuggle all day.

It occurred to me this week that I often say to Kandyce when she calls, "I can't talk, the baby..." (fill in the ending with anything from "is sick" to "is playing with playdough"). I have never, in all of these years, heard Kandyce pick up the phone with "I can't talk." And she has eight children! My husband and I can't believe how consumed we are with our one child sometimes. Until this morning when my husband generously stayed home to let me go to a coffee shop for a writing break, I started to even forget there is a world outside of my little house of illness. That's not a good thing.

So, my project today combined a little bit of charity with a little bit of Spring cleaning. I have wanted to do something to contribute to the Knit-a-Square project ( we'll keep that button up on the left under "We Wanna Help"), but I neither knit nor crochet. This charity asks for squares that will be made into blankets and donated worldwide--what a great cause! When I checked in with them recently, I found they have added a felted square option. I just happen to have a stack of sweaters that are not in good enough shape for Goodwill that I didn't know what to do with. So, I felted them by running through the hot cycle several times and then cut them into 8x8 squares. I'll be sending them off next week. You'll find the mailing address here.

Even though my project this week was small and didn't take any creativity, it just felt good to think of someone other than myself-my husband and I have spent a lot of time this week talking about our daily grind. I have decided that I will dedicate Fridays to projects for charitable giving and I'll share these ideas with you. So many of you are doing/planning great projects for Haiti and we'll be sure to post links and participate as much as we can.

Speaking of giving, don't forget that this is the last week to comment on any post this month to be entered into our January Giveaway. Good luck!