An "A-Door-able" Project and Stitches of Love for HCE Homemakers

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:

https://kareninthewoods.etsy.com/

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! 

Now that we are home... catching up a few things

We made it home from our five day weaving vacation (for me)  and now getting things back into the house and organized.... we came home to my bleeding hearts in bloom!

We have some blossoms on the cherry tree and the apple tree too!   

My oh my how Spring snuck up on us!   But.... .the danged weatherman said perhaps ~~S N O W~~    this weekend!   Only in the Northwoods of Wisconsin can we get snow on top of our blossoms! ARGGGHHHHH   And as I type this, Steveio is out mowing the lawn, go figger! 

My little Chelsea granddaughter came over on Tuesday... I swear she grew 5 inches in the 5 days I was gone!    Her mommy said she is getting too big now for the bassinette (almost 4 months old) .. so now she is going to nap in a portable crib..... just look at that face!   (to HER it is a CAGE, no doubt!) 

All of a sudden, my dad showed up at the door to bring me some important papers to straighten out for him... so he got in a few cuddles too with the little beetle bug baby! She REALLY liked his glasses... a lot! 

Once I got her down for a nap... then I was unloading some of the stuff from the rig, I decided to lay out the samples I had woven the other years from the workshops with this same teacher, Jason Collingwood.   I had taken them along for "Show N Tell" but they usually hang on the walls in my studio.  Here are my samples in various sizes, styles, colors and patterns.   Someone at the workshop said I should stitch them all together to make a rug!  I guess I really could, some of those runners are over 5 feet long!   That was a lot of learning... and a lot of yarn too! 

Now that the morning was over, I had to gear up for a Home and Community Education Cultural Arts contest and banquet for Tuesday evening.   Not only did I enter five things in the contest, but also I donated 6 pairs of socks and a scarf for the silent auction.  The proceeds go to our Scholarship Fund that we award to 2 students each year in the name of HCE.    One of our members recently passed on, and her stash of yarns was donated to the club to be used up for more knitted items.  Many of the yarns were too thin and small balls for needle knitting.   So I blended some into multicolored socks to add to the silent auction.  Here was one pair I whipped out Monday afternoon before I left for the banquet. 

(they came out kinda cute if I say so myself... and the woman who won them thought they were lovely) 

Seeing as I got all "dolled up" for the banquet... Steveio snapped a pic of me so I could have a new avatar...  I was having a good hair day, so the pic was a nice one.  Not too often I get photos of myself, and Steve usually jiggles, so he had to take about 20 shots to get one that was good.  LOL  

The banquet was wonderful and though we had thunderstorms and tornadoes move through the area south of us, we were fine at the Romy's Holiday Inn Supperclub at Kelly Lake, WI    A pair of my socks won in the "Knitting - Wearable Item" category and will go on to state judging in September.  (kinda like 4H for us old ladies!)  

I spent some money on tickets for the auction and won a few wonderful things... one item was a tied fleece blanket that works out perfectly on the floor of the livingroom for babies to play on... see?

I also won an interesting wooden statue made from Brazilwood that I knew Erin would like...

Then I won some bath gels and lotions in a WHITE cosmetic bag (now who on earth thinks a WHITE cosmetic bag will stay WHITE????)   so I am giving that to Heather...    and then some scented candles that I will keep for myself.

All in all, it was a nice banquet with lots of laughs with all my neighborhood ladies in the farming community where we are located.  Many are retired farmers wives, and share their knowledge, gardening and homemaking skills with the younger women of the club.  

Just found out we will be having Jameson overnight on Friday ... and all of the kids will all come for a Mother's Day  Celebration on Saturday with me.  Then they can all go to their respective spouse's moms on Sunday.  It doesn't matter to me when we celebrate, because I see them all so often, it's an honor for me on ANY day to have my family gather just for me.

Time to get some supper on the stove here, soninlaw Mark just came and got the beetle bug baby girl.....

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