Project Happy Feet and Giveaway

A blogging friend of mine is working to adopt a little girl from a country in Eastern Europe. Melissa has been connecting with some missionaries over in the country she'll be in, and she is going to help distribute slippers for Project Happy Feet. She is asking for slippers, knitted, crocheted, or store bought, and socks to go underneath them. She will take these with her when they travel, and she will be able to distribute them to adults in a handicapped facility and children in orphanages. In the countries in Eastern Europe, the floors in the handicapped homes and orphanages are typically cement, which often gets very cold and damp in the winter. Sometimes it can be so cold, even inside, that standing water can freeze in rooms such as bathrooms that have missing or broken windows. The residents don't have proper footwear for these rooms, no shoes, no slippers, not even socks! Cold feet are miserable feet, but warm feet are happy feet! There are many foot illnesses due to not having footwear, and by providing a resident with slippers, you could even save a life. Melissa hopes to bring slippers, socks, and/or money with her when she travels and she will be able to be there and get pictures when they are handed out. You can visit her blog to find out more about her adoption journey to bring Liza home, and you can visit this post for more info about Project Happy Feet.

I am doing a giveaway for Project Happy Feet. For every pair of slippers you make to send to Melissa, your name will be entered once in a drawing. The winner will receive metal crochet hooks, sizes L, M, and N - perfect for making slippers. To enter, simply make slippers and send them to Melissa at the address provided in her blog post. After you've mailed them, be sure to email me with your name and number of slippers you donated, and I will enter you in the drawing. (Note - if you live near me, and you want to participate, you can get your slippers to me, and I can ship them with mine.) I will draw the winner when Melissa leaves to travel, which will (hopefully) be sometime in the next few weeks. The pattern I use for slippers can be found here.

Thanks for participating!!

The prize for the giveaway

Frosty's Face!

Frosty now has a face! I posted about Frosty quite awhile ago but I hadn't decided what I was going to do for his face. You can read that post and more about Frosty here.

Fair Showing - Crocheting

Sorry it took me so long to get this post up. Below is pictures of me showing and some of my projects.

Showing my plarn bag

Showing my afghan

Showing Frosty (Frosty did finally get a face! :D)

I got Best of Show on my afghan! That is the item for my division - Beginning Crocheting. There is also Advanced Crocheting. I am not allowed to move up to advanced until I have been in the crocheting project 3 years. This is only my second year.

I got a 1st place on my fish!

Sorry this picture of Frosty is blury. I'll try and get a better one of his face soon. There is a red ribbon next to Frosty's head, but that was from somebody else's project. I got blue on Frosty!

Sorry this is sideways, it wasn't like that before I downloaded it. I got a first place and an Honorable Mention on my pot holders.

Sorry about this one too. I got a red (2nd place) on my baby set all because of ONE thread that I missed that was sticking out. :(

My hat and my scarf, I got a blue on both of them.

And my plarn bag, which I also got a first on.

I would have brought more to the fair, but they don't have enough places to enter things. I am getting that changed for next year. :) I'm very happy with how this years fair went, and I can't wait until next year! I give all the praise to God for giving me this talent to crochet, for how much I've improved, and how I did at fair!

Doilies and Grandmothers

Awhile ago my great grandmother passed away. She was an amazing lady. You name a handiwork - crocheting, knitting, tatting, painting, she could do it! And do it very well! She was my mom's grandmother, and she taught my mom to crochet, and my mom taught me. She made many many doilies. Neither my mom or me has learned to make doilies yet. That is on my goal list, and I am going to try and get it done this winter. Thread crochet takes a long time, and a lot of patience, but otherwise isn't that different from crocheting with yarn. It's just smaller and takes some getting used to. My friend Brianna makes doilies. I admire her for having the patience to do that, because that is one of the main things she makes. She sells them. You can see some of her doilies here and here. Another thing my great grandmother made were thread stars. She probably made hundreds of them in her lifetime. They were about 4 inches wide, and made of thread. She attached a tag to each of them that said "Hang this star in your window so that Jesus knows you love Him". We have several of those hanging in our house and they're very special to us. She crocheted me and the three middle kids in my family baby blankets when they were born, those are beautiful too! She crocheted mostly thread items, and knitted with thread as well as yarn. She also was an amazing painter! Art skills aren't something I inherited from her. :) My cousin got them instead. I am the only one of her descendants that crochets (besides my mom), so I got all of her crochet hooks. Most of them are thread hooks, but there is a really interesting one in there that's metal and it looks handmade. My great aunt Mona knits, so she got all of her knitting needles. I also received all of my grandmothers yarn (against my wishes, I have quite enough), because my aunt didn't want to fly back home with a huge tub of yarn! So I have a huge tub of yarn in my closet from her. The last thing I received when she passed was her book of patterns which is a treasure (or will be when I start thread crochet) even though she wasn't a very talented pattern writer. It has all of her doily patterns as well as the star pattern! Sadly, she passed away this past spring. She died at age 94, and was crocheting, knitting, painting, and doing everything else until the end when she couldn't see her work anymore! She was an amazing lady, and the greatest great grandmother ever, and without her I wouldn't be where I am as a crocheting right now. Thank you Grandma!! One of my other great grandmothers (my mom's other grandma) and her mother were also both excellent crocheters! I do not think crocheting would even be known to us today if it wasn't for our grandmothers and to pass it on through the generations. Grandmothers are definitely to credit for keeping crocheting alive!! Thank you to all the grandmothers on this earth and who have lived this earth for keeping this amazing hobby alive!! I know I will being passing this hobby on to my grandchildren (when I eventually have some!) and I hope you will too!

We think this doily is tatting. Does anyone know if this is tatting?

This doily beautiful doily was crocheted by my Grandma

This doily (also crocheted) is my favorite

This is a hanging in our living room that has one of my grandma's stars, a picture of her, and if you can't read it, a note from her that says "God loves you and so do I - Grandma D"

This is the blanket she made for me when I was born

This is one of the blankets that she made for the 3 middle children in our family

Some of the larger hooks I inherited from her

The smaller thread hooks I got from her (sorry the picture is a little blurry!)

One of her paintings - This one she painted for me and it's my favorite of all her paintings

One of the stars she made

 Thank you Grandma! You left a great heritage for our family (especially with your handiwork!)!!

The **TOP SECRET** Project!

Quite awhile ago, my friend Rachel and I decided to crochet a project for our mom's for Mother's Day (we did plan this before Mother's Day!). Unfortunately Mother's Day came and went before we could get together to start it. Our moms had no idea what we were making until we gave it to them. We called our bags our "top secret project" and nobody knew what we were doing until we were done, besides Anna and Rebekah (Rachel's younger sister) who helped make plarn for us at the end. We made these bags completely out of plarn and added a strand of white acrylic to the handle for extra support. This was Rachel's first big project and she did amazing on her bag, even though she doesn't agree she did a good job. It took us two times getting together to finish it, but we had fun working together and spending time with each other. We even won two Dairy Queen blizzards on the radio's Bible Quiz the first time we were working on our project. :) We had to fudge the pattern a little but they still turn out ok! Our mom's both loved our bags and we had fun making them! I brought mine to fair.

My bag

My mom and her bag

Rachel's mom and her bag

A New Blog, More Handiwork, And a New Little Brother!!!!

A New Blog, More Handiwork, And a New Little Brother!!!! All in one! :) Yes, I have started a new blog. Yes, there will be more of my handiwork involved. And the cause is a fundraiser for my little brother! My family has decided to adopt a little boy named Elijah from Eastern Europe. I am selling my handiwork on my new blog to raise money to help bring him home!! Some of the things I will be selling there are - dish cloths, pot holders, slippers, scarves, hats, sewn bags, sewn cloth napkins, baby accessories, sun hats, and much more! Please stop in at our adoption blog and read about our adoption journey! - mygodislord.blogspot.com. And please stop by my new blog too and see what I currently have for sale! - handiworkforelijah.blogspot.com. We are doing everything we can to get my new little brother home here, and one of the ways I'm helping is with my new blog!

Elijah Joseph!

Knitted Baby Hat

I just found this post. I was typed at the beginning of June, and I never got published. I thought I had published it, but I guess not. :)

I finished this knitted baby hat the other day. I am going to bring it to fair. The pattern for it can be found here. I put a crocheted border around the bottom of it. After fair I am going to send it to Ukraine. I hope it will keep some little baby's head warm!

Fair Showing

We had Fair showing today. It went really well. I showed all of my crocheting, knitting, sewing, photography and woodworking today. Tomorrow I'm showing my Foods and Vegetables, and Thursday I'm showing my cat. I'll post pictures and more about today soon, as it's already 10 pm and it's been a long day. :)

Oh, I haven't posted pictures yet but I finished my huge fiesta skirt that is 30 feet around the bottom! Pictures of that coming soon!