The Things You teach Yer Kids.....

THIS can backfire. It can cost you a lot of Time and Money. Even heartache and effort that you do not want to release.

Teach them to love and respect animals, and they bring home strays.

Teach them to eat healthy and exercise and you become a Lifetime member of Weight Watchers.

Teach them to be neat and tidy, and they pick up after you, and you cannot find anything.

Teach them to be brave, and they move away to strange cities.

Teach them about God, and they remind you to read your Bible more often and to judge not.

Teach them about tithing and money management and you eat generic Cheerios when you go visit....AND wear a sweater in their house...

Teach them about caring for the Planet, and they complain that they have become "just like Mommmmmm!" when they fill their minivans with bags of leaves for their compost piles.

Teach them to love growing plants, and they will dig up your yard.

Teach them to love their husbands, and they WANT to go home after only a few days' visit.

Teach them compassion for others, and your fingers work frantically to knit 3 hats in as many days before you drive halfway across country.

And this is where my story begins......

Kathryn called last night. Coming home from Bible Study....A third friend of hers at church has been diagnosed with breast cancer. The three friends are all losing their hair. But, being from the same church, they have literally formed a "club cancer" and are bonding with bald heads in a cold climate.

Kathryn, after raising a child with very little hair to cover his head (he's getting a bit now that he is pressing towards 2 years old), and being very aware of "holding in that core temperature" when they go outside, asked me to knit. Knit some hats for these three ladies. Purple ones, if you have the yarn, Mom....Purple is our church's icon color.

So, as we talk on the cordless phone, I am digging around in my yarn stash for purple. Purple wools, all shades, from my trek to Vermont last summer. Too coarse for delicate, "newly exposed" scalps. Purple varigated. Too "busy." Something, soft, Mom, and something that will cover their ears. And, oh, yeh...could you include some Collie wool somewhere on it for embellishment?

I'll need at least 3 skeins of matching yarn to make these hats. And several hours of just sitting and knitting to finish the project before I take off for the dog show (and my sister's home) in Georgia. Nevermind that the car needs vaccing and the dogs need brushing, and oh, yeh, I Should be packing some things.....

After I hang up, I remember the purple (dark lavender, really) yarn that I have "recycled." Recycled yarn is yarn that is un-knitted from another garment. I read about it on the internet. There's a whole Group of knitters who only use recycled yarn. You can even buy it on ebay! Find a nice sweater at a junk store, take it home, and spend an hour unravelling it, and give that yarn a New Life. It's been fun to find sweaters that can be easily "un-knitted," and I've even begun a project making a shawl out of one very long sweater.

I've finished two hats. For the first one, I made the brim out of the recycled purple with some Collie wool and fuzzies as "embellishment." The body of the hat is lime green (God's favorite color)of a very soft and fuzzy and sparkly acrylic.

Never one to make 2 things exactly the same (you should see the mittens I've tried to knit!), I knitted the other hat with a lacy brim. Same purple, then topping the brim w/more Collie wool, then using the same green for the body of the hat. I've begun knitting a rib stitch for the third brim, just to change things up a little more....With maybe a few lacy rows in between.

But right now.....Right now I am going to vaccuum the car and plan my packing.....I'll knit when the sun goes down. And mail them off by Saturday. Be on the lookout for the hats in the mail, Kate-o! Boy, I sure did a Good Job (too good of a job!) raising you!

xoxoxo Momma