Recycling

My daughter wanted us to start recycling, so we bought 4 different trash cans and she wrote on the lids in really cool writing "Cans", "Paper", "Plastic" and "glass". She gave everyone in the family the recycling rules and we got started. By the end of the week we had a full bag of cans (they drink too much pop), and almost full bags of the other 3 items. Now, what do we do with it? There isn't a recycling center in our town. So much for trying to go green!

Also, on the recycling front, I started going through old knitting patterns last night and found one of my favorites.

I made this bag a couple of years ago for a gift and it really turned out pretty. I made it exactly like the pattern. I love turquoise and brown together and with the silver beads it was really artsy and looked like it really took alot of work. In reality, it was very easy even though it was my first time working with beads.

So let's all start recycling and look through our old patterns, pick out an old favorite and knit it again! Also, don't forget about recycled yarn. My sister and I had a lot of fun one night ripping out old wool sweaters that we found at good will.

Wii would like to play

I hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend. My parents were in town (staying with my sister). We had a good time, caught up on all of Dad's medical stuff, watched lots of movies and played with my sister's new Wii Fit.

I'm going to have to get me a Wii, because Mii wants to play. I hate exercise with a passion, but Wii really makes it fun. I can do the yoga, balance exercises, aerobics (it's funny to watch me). After you complete some of the basic exercises, it unlocks new games (exercises) such as kick boxing. It keeps track of your weight, BMI, center of balance for posture, and it lets you know if you are doing good, or need more work.

I'm saving my pennies and I'm going to buy a Wii as soon as I can find one.

Red Scarf Project

Have you heard of this project? It's through the Ophans Foundation of America. A unique initiative to warm the hearts (and necks) of college-bound foster youth. They began taking donations of handmade red scarves to put into our Valentine's Day Care Packages Your wonderful handmade creation will be sent in a Valentine’s Day Care Package to an OFA student enrolled in college or trade school.

This year a group of us on Ravelry in the "Traveling Scarf Group" decided we would support the Red Scarf Project and knit for the kids.

Usually 1 person knits a scarf, tags it with their information and sends it to OFA for distribution. We thought it would be cool for these kids to know that 10 different people put their artistic minds and hands to work and created a piece of art and love for them. We are each knitting at least 6" of each scarf, tagging it and shipping it off to the next knitter. By the time the scarves are finished and ready to mail they will have traveled from coast to coast before landing in the hands of a college-bound kid.

I shipped my starter scarf off last week to get the 2nd section of 6" knit and forgot to take a picture. But here is a picture of a scarf that I received and knit my section and ready it will be heading to Manhattan, KS by tomorrow.

Here's a link with all the information if you are interested in joining us! http://orphan.org/index.php?id=40

Tornados - Where's Dorothy when you need her!

I've live in Oklahoma all my life and when the weatherman says there's a tornado watch we go stand on the backporch and look for it. I've never been afraid of tornados (I respect them - but I'm not going to freak out and cry if there's a tornado watch or warning). I've raised my kids so that they know what to do in case of an actual tornado coming and they won't freak out either. Now my son-in-law is a different story. I don't know what happened to him as a child when it comes to tornados but he panics if he sees the little map in the corner of the TV that says tornado anything. It doesn't even have to be in our county and he's freakin' out.

So, Wednesday night there were tornado watchs and a few warnings in our county. It was raining really really hard and the wind was blowing pretty good. We live about 7 miles from town and we heard the sirens going off and that's all he could handle. For some reason he wants to get in the car and leave and I'm trying to tell him that's the worst thing to do, if he's that scared he needs to go into the bathroom and get in the tub with blankets piled on top of him. He kept saying he didn't want the house to fall on him and he needed to get out. I thought we were going to have to tie him down, sedate him or something.

Thursday morning after all the tornado commotion we did hear that there was actually a tornado that touched down about 35 miles from us - an F Zero. I'm not really sure if that counts as a tornado or not, I think it was more like really strong wind with a little rotation. There wasn't much damage, just some trees down.

Now to talk about my knitting - I'm still working on the traveling scarves and it seems they've all landed in my lap. I've got 3, mailing 1 out today, workinging on another, trying to decide what to do with the 3rd and then I'm also working on "The Red Scarf Project" This is where knitters knit unisex red scarves and send them to the orphan foundation to be distributed to the Foster kids who have aged out and are not in college. Hopefully I'll have it finished today and can mail it out tomorrow. Then there's the dreaded squares for our traveling afghan. I received my first square and it's so soft and pretty, I hope the other's do it justice. I've got to get busy working on them, I've mailed 1 and finished another just need to decide who the new owner will be.

I've got to seam together the little cardi I knit for my daughter. Seaming is the worst part to me. I'm the world's worst about knitting on something for days and when the knitting is finished it goes in the basket or bag and sits for a month or so before I get it back out again. I need to get that done this weekend also.

As long as the wind stays in someone else's backyard for awhile!