Highlights from the first half of 2009

One of our favorite highlights of the first half of the year is our Hugs & Stitches birthday on the first Tuesday of February!! We always have such a great time celebrating. This year marked our fourth anniversary as you can tell by the four "yarn balls" on our cake! (photo below) A friend works in a local grocery store bakery and suprised us last year by making us a wonderful cake for our third year with three yarn ball cupcakes on top! It was absolutely adorable - so this year I went back for one with an added yarn ball. Last year was done in bright colors and this year they went with pastels. A little hard to see all the detail and hard work they put into it - but aside from the yarn balls there are crochet hooks and knitting needles too - and everything made of icing!!

Just following our birthday - also in February - we were asked by another friend who is involved with Special Olympics if we could make the Special Olympians some scarves for their upcoming Winter Games. Of course we were MORE THAN HAPPY to help out. We asked what colors they needed and the Carroll County division uses burgundy and white - so we got right to work! Below are a few of the scarves............

Here are three of the Special Olympic Athletes with one of their coaches. From left to right are athletes Chris, Nicole and Stephanie with Coach Doug. They really seemed to love their scarves. We let them choose the ones they liked best. We thought it was cute that both girls chose the same pattern!

Here is most of our Hugs & Stitches group with the Special Olympics crew! We have quite a few more members than this - but they all can't make it each and every week. So some of our loyal "stitchers" sadly aren't pictured! But we sure enjoyed that evening very much and were so happy to help out those terrific S.O. athletes.

Before I get to our counts - I want to thank each and every one of the Hugs & Stitches gals who come faithfully each and every week to crochet and knit their little hearts out. They are the most wonderful bunch of ladies anyone could ever know and I am so blessed to have them all in my life and many others are blessed by the beautiful scarves, hats and mittens that they lovingly make each week!

And now for the news that I know all our readers wait for - and that is our totals for the year so far! As you know - our big project that we focus on first is the Shepherd's Staff "Call for Coats" Project. Each year we try to out-do ourselves in how many scarves we can donate to them. This year however - we have more ladies who can make hats - so even if our scarf numbers haven't increased too much - we have a lot more hats than we ever have!! (as a matter of fact - we already have more hats at the half year than we had for the whole year in 2008!) That is really great news. Not only that - but a lot more of the scarves and hats are being made in matching sets - which is a big help to the volunteers at Shepherd's Staff.

So now - here are the numbers from January 1st through June 30th, 2009......

Afghans - 55

Scarves - 704

Hats - 329

Mittens - 30 pair

As you can see - we still don't have enough ladies able to make mittens. We only had one before - but just last month, a new lady joined us who also makes them - so our numbers should increase for mittens too. At least a little!!

Well - I guess that's it for now. I do apologize for taking so long to update our blog - but I think most of you know that I was quite ill for most of last year and even into the first part of this year. So while I wanted to get to it - it was all I could do to keep up with what absolutely needed done. I hope I haven't lost a lot of my followers - but based on my emails - I don't think I have! Thanks to everyone for all of their patience!! God Bless and come back and read our blog soon. Now that I am finally feeling better - I should be updating it a bit more regularly!