GTA Donations November 2010

November is the month we do our drive for Christmas items for the babies.

Most of these Santa hats were made by a lady that works with my daughter.

This is a preemie blanket I made with a matching diaper shirt.

 This cute little quilt was made from vintage Christmas Precious Moments fabric. This is one of my thrifty creations because I found the PM fabric last summer at a yard sale and paid a whopping $1.45 for it. I had the batting and red backing.

 Here is a closeup of the Precious Moments fabric. Isn't it cute?

I bought some Bear Claw pattern "cheater" quilt tops quite some time ago off of Ebay and just now got around to making up one of them.

I found this cute little fleecy soft baby blanket at our local Goodwill. It has pretty little cars embroidered on one corner of the binding.

Here's a closer look at the binding.

Just a couple of baby blue hats I made for the babies.

I found this bright circus quilt top at our local DAV. That's like a Goodwill shop for those of you that don't know, but the proceeds go to help veterans. I paid a whole 95 cents for the top, such a deal!

I had just a little bit of this skein of yarn left so I made a pair of booties out of it.

 Another smaller blanket made from a granny square out of lavender, yellow and white yarns.

I didn't have a full skein of this yarn either so I ended up making a little dress.





That's it for this time. I didn't get anywhere near as much made this time as I would have liked to  but Peyton's rocking chair and history book took up a lot of my time this time. Plus I was trying to get a head start on Christmas presents. Hopefully I can concentrate more on making things for the babies now, because we can use everything we can get! Every little bit helps, but I sure want to make more!

A Veteran's Day Salute

LOUIS LLOYD POOL

                                            Born 8-29-1920 Died 9-25-1944

This post has been created to honor my maternal uncle who was killed in action over Normandy, France during World War II. 415th Infantry Regiment, 104th Infantry Division

Most of my information is supplied by newspaper clippings that were saved from the DeWitt Observer by my mother, Elva C. Reiman (deceased) who was Lloyd's sister. Some information has been gathered from family members who knew Lloyd.

Louis Lloyd Pool was born August 29, 1920 in De Witt, Clinton County, Iowa to Charles Newton Pool and Bridgett Mary (Lizzie) Elizabeth Feldpausch.

He was always referred to as Lloyd, he never went by his first name of Louis.

Lloyd attended St Joseph's School in De Witt, Clinton county, Iowa.

                                   Here is Lloyd's High School Portrait

 

After high school, Lloyd worked at Paper Products Factory in DeWitt, IA, and Nichols Wire and Steele Company in Davenport, IA. He was working at Frank and Sons Lumber Company, DeWitt, IA when he was called into armed services on November 19, 1942.

He trained at Camp Adair, OR for a year, spent a month in Arizona on maneuvers, and was then transferred to Camp Carson, CO for five months. He then was tranferred to New York where he was deployed to France.


According to newspaper clippings I have, Lloyd's mother received a telegram from the War Department stating that Lloyd was missing in action in France. She then received a telegram on October 16, 1944 stating he was killed in action in southern France on September 25, 1944. (I have been receiving additional info from kind readers telling me about the unit Lloyd was in and what battle, etc he may have been involved in at the time of his death.).

A memorial service was held for him on Monday, March 26, 1945 at St. Joseph's Catholic Church, DeWitt, IA. Rev. John Moriarty conducted the services.

Lloyd is buried in the American Cemetery in Normandy France.

The DeWitt, IA Community Club did it's patriotic thing by giving out certificates to all men and women who served their country during World War II.

Here is a copy of Lloyd's certificate.

Here's a picture of a souvenir from Lloyd's first furlough home.

Looks like one of his buddies printed this on one of those old paper pill cups they had back in the 1940's. (Maybe it's a beer cup, hard to say).

I am proud to display these pictures of Uncle Lloyd's Purple Heart.

NOTES: Lloyd was killed 4 months AFTER the invasion of Normandy.



WIP Wednesday-Brites Babyghan and GW Score

 Here is my progress on my "Brites" babyghan. I looked back and saw I had 4 colors done this time last week, so I've gotten to where I have just about doubled my work since then.

Just starting on my eighth color. I don't seem to crochet all that fast I guess but I keep plodding along.

I think I have hit the bottom of my brights color selection so after this orange stripe is done I'm going to having to go back and reuse all my colors again.

 Now on to some other fun stuff. Yesterday I needed to go to the grocery store but decided I'd pitstop at our local Goodwill first and see if anything there would scream out to me "buy me! buy me!".
Look what screamed at me!

The first picture is what I bought. I got a whole box of ALL......THIS.......YARN.....for the grand sum of $3.38! WooooHooo!

The rest of the pictures are just closeups of what was in there so you can see what all there is.

I ALMOST didn't stop at GW, sure glad now that I did. But I won't do it again on a Tuesday.

I didn't realize it, but our local GW has 25 cent day on Tuesdays. This week, anything that had a blue tag was 25 cents.

I should have realized when it took me 2 trips around the parking lot to get a parking space that something was up.

I'm telling you, it was wall to wall people in there. I've never seen so many people in there at one time. They had all their checkout lanes open but every one had at least 10 people in line. Except one lane, where one lady had her cart so full of clothes that it looked like a miniature mountain, seriously. Obviously, no one got in line behind her!

I don't know how they do it at other Goodwills, but at ours the people stocking shelves have a two shelf cart with totes on them that they bring the stuff out from the back on to put on the shelfs. The golden rule is that you can't take anything off of that cart, you have to wait til they put the items out or they can hand you something off of the cart.
I saw this box of yarn waiting to be put out on the cart. Well, I patiently waited right by that box of yarn until the gentlman stocking came back and asked him if I could please have the box of yarn on the cart. No way was I going to let someone else get it! So I thanked him profusely and almost skipped up to the checkout counters.
I'm happy I got this great buy, but at the same time, it's kind of sad to think someone actually gave yarn away! Do people REALLY part with their yarn???
I'm guessing someone passed away and the family just didn't have any use for the yarn so they donated it to Goodwill. Sad. Much of it is fairly old, but yarn doesn't get old, right? Most of the baby Jamie yarn has tags on them that say Michaels 1996. It all smells good, so it was probably part of someone's stash.
Lucky for me, my hubby is good about not griping when I come hauling more yarn home, especially when I get such a good bargain as this!
He knows I'm a yaranaholic and he's totally supportive of my crocheting for needy babies.
Well, that's my week, how has yours been?
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WIP Wednesday - Brites Crochet Babyghan

Now that Peyton's rocking chair is done, I'm trying to concentrate more on working on crocheting baby items for the charity I belong to, God's Tiny Angels. So this week I am working on a "brites" baby afghan.

You see that Mr. Rocky had to supervise my picture taking, as usual. NOTHING gets done around here without his assistance.

I went through my yarn stash and dug out all of the bright yarns I could find. The majority of what I found was Red Heart Super Saver yarn with a few Caron One Pound skeins thrown into the mix.

They say babies like to focus on bright items and I really enjoy working with the bright yarns, so this seemed like the perfect project for me.
Just so you wouldn't be blinded by all the brightness lol, I decided to use white for a dividing color in between the colored stripes.
It's a no brainer pattern I used, pretty simple. I made a chain of 113 stitches for my start then everything else is all double crochets. Three rows of each color. Can't get much simpler than that!
I will probably edge it in single crochet for the first round then scalloped shells to finish it off.

I just had to show you this cute picture I got of Rocky and Baby. I call it the double decker cat bunk bed nap time :)
Obviously Rocky likes my new cushions I made for MY rocking chairs, and Baby seems to prefer sleeping on the cushion I put on the floor for her under the chair. She likes little cubbyhole places so under the chair is her preferred spot.

Poor Peyton has had quite the time of it since her birthday on October 27th.She tripped running and smacked the corner of her eye on a wooden bench. She got a nice goose egg and quite the shiner out of that. Then on her birthday she had to go into the hospital for awhile. Poor thing was vomiting and had diarrhea bad enough that she got pretty dehydrated and had to have an IV put in to get her re-hydrated. She DID get to go home that night though. She is just now starting to keep solids foods down. Seems like it's going around. The cultures aren't back yet but they think she probably has rota virus. I hadn't heard of that before but did some research and found out it's a pretty contagious virus that irritates your intestines. Seems it's pretty common for kids her age to get it, and you can catch it from other kids usually that are in a child care setting (which one of her little friends is).  You get it from oral contact with fecal matter. So if someone doesn't wash their hands well after changing a diaper from someone who has it, or going to the bathroom that has it, it's easy to pick up the germ.Or in the case of a young child, chewing on something that has been in contact with the virus.
And to top it all off, her two top front teeth are coming in. 
So all in all, poor little Miss Peyton has not had a good week.
How has YOUR week been and what are you working on?
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