So what are these goofy people up to today? Steveio and Karen went off on a journey right before supper to pick up something else for their farmhouse. What the heck are they up to now?
We sure are silly!
What did we get?
Well, it's a door!
For an adorable project.
Steve was looking on Marketplace and happened to see this old vintage wooden door. It exactly matches the ones that are already in our house. It just so happens, when the bedrooms were reconfigured to add a master bath, the door in the new opening leading from the living room to our bedroom is a modern one. Not vintage. It's actually a hollow core cheap door that just isn't very nice. Steve says every time he looks at it, he hates it. So he's been keeping his eye out to look for a matching vintage door of the same era and style of our house.
And he finally found one! And it's the RIGHT size! Located just a few houses down from our younger daughter's rural home, we buzzed out to get it right away.
It's going to need a little work. Some sanding and fresh paint. We will put our really cool vintage door knob on it and remove the brass one that's there. He managed to bargain with the guy and got it for only $20.
It's straight and not warped and not cracked. So in the next couple days we will get it sanded down and I will get out my handy dandy paintbrush. Soon it will be hanging up in it's glory and be "A-Door-able". We will post the cheap modern hollow core door on Marketplace for someone else to buy.
While we were picking up the door, I happened to look down and see my first wooly caterpillar of the season. Look how wide the band is on his belly! You know what that means? A long snowy hard winter.
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Today was a pretty busy day for me. I got up early and got my sewing machine packed up and ready to go. I belong to an organization that's offered through the University of Wisconsin Extension division called HCE, which stands for Home and Community Education. It's nickname is called the "Homemakers". Kind of like 4H for old ladies! LOL
It originally started as a group of rural farm women who would gather together once a month to share a lesson or do a volunteer task and share a meal and share friendship and companionship. I was invited to belong back in 1997 by my neighbor Charlotte when we lived out on the river. I took a hiatus when we moved away to Chilton, but now renewed my membership when we moved back to Oconto.
Today was "Stitches of Love". Once a year, we donate book bags (120 of them!) to some impoverished school districts in the North. Some of these are on the Native American reservation land. They are for the Head Start children and some of the upper grades. In these book bags we include much needed school supplies. Everybody gets a new notebook, pencils, erasers, ruler, glue sticks, crayons and then one reading book and one coloring book geared towards their age. Then throughout the year we knit up a stash of desperately needed mittens, hats and slippers. These are tucked into each bag as well. We get donations of fabric and it's our job to sew up 120 book bags! Just like this:
We also get a grant for a large purchase of quality fleece material. The ladies spend a lot of time stretching it out on large tables and cutting all of the little slits around the edges. They sit around the tables and tie hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of these knots. The fleece blankets are given to people in our community who are in hospice and need a little bit of comfort. Each one is tagged with a little tag from the HCE group and they are given free of charge to people who really need them.
We are able to secure the use of the Brazeau Town Hall for the day, free of charge. They have plenty of room for us to do our work. The ladies gather the tables into groups and start laying out the sheets of colorful fleece fabrics and coordinate colors for contrasting tops and bottoms.
Other ladies, including myself,
line up our sewing machines and
get to work sewing the book bags!
It is a room full of joyful camaraderie, with the spirit of giving and helping being the loving force behind our nimble fingers and the whirring stitches on our sewing machines.
The fleece blanket tying ladies are all sitting around the tables, reminiscent of an old fashioned quilting bee. Of course, these tied quilts or blankets go a lot faster than traditional quilting. But we are doing it for charity and we are truly blessed that we get help with the purchase of the expensive good quality fabric needed to make these tied blankets. There is a lot of fun, chitter chatter, and laughter.
I stitched away on my machine
in the morning
and made up a whole stack of book bags.
We made a pretty good dent in what is needed, and there are some in our stash of materials already assembled from gals who couldn't make it. They took the fabric home in advance and created them on their own time.
While we were doing this, one of our leaders of the group, Joy, was working on her special chili that she makes for us for lunch. Other ladies brought in some desserts and we had a fine meal for our lunch break.
Once we were done, we packed away all of our supplies and sewing machines. The fabric turned into now tied blankets needs to have a little personalized tag hand sewn onto each one. Here are 10 of them going home with my neighbor Charlotte, so she can take care of this batch and get them ready to be used as needed.
It's like each one is a special hug to the recipient from all of us who wish to donate our time and efforts to create these items.
Oh, once a year we also have a Cultural Arts Competition of items within our district. We held that in July with a nice outdoor picnic at Joy's farm. It's kind of like a big ole 4-H county fair for old ladies! I had entered five items in our local chapter and three of them were considered good enough to go to the state judging that occurred in September. The director from our County had attended the state event, which is from all of the counties around Wisconsin. She brought our items back from the main State-Wide judging.
I was quite pleased to see that my coffee cup quilt took a first place, and my socks also took a first place! Then my woven woolen rug took a second place. That is an honor!
It was nice to be recognized for the cultural arts that I am able to produce in my little home studio. Now these three items can be placed in my Etsy shop for sale:
It's time to wrap up this blog. Maybe the next one will be another campground review, or maybe a post of the newest quilt I am working on, or maybe a big trenching project we did in our backyard? I guess you will just have to tune in to see!
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Congrats on the competition entries. You did very well. It is nice to have a good group of like minded friends and to be able to do for others gives a good warm feeling. Have a really great fall.
ReplyDeleteIt appears that Fall isn't going to last long here this year, we are moving right into WINTER! Snow to the north of us, and now snow to the south of us. So far, we just got missed. But it's coming... .I know.
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