8

Today's RAK happened at Panera.  When I got my lunch I also purchased a $10 gift card.  My plan was to hand it to someone as they walked in when I was leaving.  I was slightly foiled because no one was coming in when I was ready to leave.  I ended up standing outside on the curb waiting for someone to come in for lunch.  After a couple of minutes a nice lady came walking up and I handed her the gift card and a note explaining what I was doing.  I started walking to the car and heard her yelling at me to wait.  Turns out she wanted to give me a hug!

Sidetracked

I've been sidetracked from doing good deeds.  What with the chilly weather we've been having, I haven't felt like going outside and looking for opportunities.  Instead I've been sitting in front of the TV watching Netflix and knitting.  I used Ravelry to find some free lace patterns so that I could use up some of the yarn I had sitting in the stash without a project in mind.

I really like making lace because of how dramatically it changes from being a pile of cooked spaghetti to something beautiful with the application of water and stretching.

This first one is the Lila shawl, made with Schaeffer yarn in Anne.  It's really more of a wide scarf than a shawl, but still pretty and it only took one skein of yarn.

This second one is called Yakbeere.  I had to make some  corrections to the pattern because it didn't make any mathematical sense, but after I figured out the right numbers it turned out nicely.  Made from Knit Picks Palette in Wood.

7

While I was at the grocery store yesterday I gave a Dominicks gift card to the lady behind me in the checkout line.  I was hoping for a really random act, but it turned out to be someone who goes to my church. 

6

Last night we had about 4 inches of snow.  That's not a lot by normal Chicago standards, but the last couple of years we've had a lot less snow than usual.  In any case, my good deed for today was to blow out a path for Daughter and her friend so that they could walk down to the bus stop on the sidewalk, rather than walk in the street and risk getting hit by a plow.  The driveway in the picture that looks like it doesn't have a nice path is where I had to detour around parked cars.  I ended up blowing snow out of part of their lawn because the car was parked so close to the sidewalk, but sometimes these things can't be helped.

6? No, I Guess Not

Daughter and I had to buy some new shoes today, as her current pair is attempting to amputate her feet.  When we got to the shoe store, I saw the car above.  I could easily claim that my Random Act for today was to Not write "Nice Parking" in the salt and dirt on the driver side door.  Or that it was blurring out the license plate so that the owner won't be embarrassed to see his or her car parked so flagrantly in the middle of two parking spaces.  But the whole point of this exercise is to be a better person, I'm not going to count the fact that I didn't give in to an evil urge as an actual act of kindness.

But it was REALLY tempting!

5

Yesterday's random act was to buy lunch for the lady in the car behind me at McDonalds.  She didn't order much, but whatever it was she didn't have to pay for it.

1, 2, 3, and 4

Random Acts 1, 2, 3, and 4 were put in the mail and sent off today.  They are on their way to Canada, which actually caused a bit of knitterly musing.  Since Canada is another country (although it hardly seems like it to someone who grew up in the U.P.) I was required to fill out a customs declaration for for each of the packages.  Along with who it was to and who it was from, they also wanted to know what was inside and what it was worth.  Well, there is a small sweater in there, and about 16 hours of my time.  The yarn cost was about $10 per sweater, but I'm not sure how you factor in the value of making thousands of connected little stitches that will one day keep a little person cold on a warm day.  What's the value of good will?  What's the value of concern?  I put down $10, but that seems low from a knitters perspective.

She's Baa aack

Alright, I'm back.  For whatever reason, I sort of felt like I ran out of things to say a year and a half ago. Whatever the reason, I took my hiatus and now I'm back with a plan.

Last year I stumbled across The Birthday Project.   The general gist of the story is that a woman who was celebrating her 38th birthday spent the day doing 38 random acts of kindness, turning her birthday into a day celebrating other people.  It seemed like an excellent idea to me. This year I will be turning 45 in April.  For some reason that feels like a milestone of some kind; I'm halfway done with my life journey, or some such thing.  I've decided that I would like to do the same thing as this woman did, but with a slightly different timeline.

I'm committing to doing 45 random good things for other people, but I'm giving myself all year to do them.  As I was thinking of things that I could do, I decided that I wouldn't be able to physically do 45 meaningful things for other people in one day.  With a year to spread things out over I'll be able to make my goal without making myself (or Husband) crazy in the process.

I'll keep track of what I've done here, so you can share my birthday with me all year long.