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. 

While I'm Waiting

For Mother's Day this year my gift was an upgrade of my MP3 player from a very old, very clunky, very small (storage wise) Zen Touch, to a brand new iPod Touch. One of the things I'm liking most about it is that I can download books from Audible.com as well as from my library via MyMediaMall. Once they're on it I can then go walking/jogging/riding my bike with a good book. The down side is that it takes a really long time to download a book onto first the computer, then transfer it onto the iPod.

So while I'm waiting for Sacred Stone to finishe downloading, I'll update you on the small amount of knitting I've gotten done.

After finishing what I'm calling the "6 Million End" outfit, I decided I'd like something simple, with not a lot of ends to deal with. The perfect project for that is a Wallaby. So I looked around in the stash and came up with some green yarn that hadn't yet found its purpose in life and whipped one up.



It's made with Caron Simply Soft and Lambie Pie. I finished it while my family was here for the baby shower and my mom remembered that she needed a baby gift for another new Mom, and she promptly purchased it from me.

Life Keeps Moving

Life is certainly an interesting thing to experience. You're coasting along, everything is in its groove, and then suddenly it all gets crazy. Spring break Disney vacations, birthdays, funerals, weddings, baby showers, then the next thing you know it's your kid's last day of school.

So I've been busy is what I'm trying to say. So busy that I have done very little knitting. Because of the upcoming baby shower (this Sunday in fact,) I did finally buckle down and get some stuff accomplished.



That's the Zebrafol pattern from the Dale baby collection #129. I made it out of Knitpicks Pallette which is Peruvian Highlands wool. It turned out nicely, but it's certainly not a pattern that I'll be making for casual acquaintances. Because of the number of colors that are used this is what the inside of the leggings looked like when I started sewing in the ends. Keep in mind that I worked about half of them in as I went, so this could have been double what it looks like.



And this is what the pile of cut off ends looked like when I got done:



So definitely a labor of love. Hopefully the Great-Niece and her parents will appreciate it.