Happy Birthday

 to me! Today, Feb. 4, I have reached the venerable age of 80! Hard to believe but here it is. I gave a lot of thought on how to celebrate this milestone.....a party?.....a trip? When I came across an article in ARRP magazine and how a woman named Peggy Wheatcroft celebrated her big day and I decided that that was what I wanted to do. You can read the whole article here.  And now with Covid ruling all, I could never have done a party or a trip anyway. My family trip to Poland was cancelled, of course. 

Peggy's premise was to give 80 dollars to 80 people and ask them to pay it forward. They could give it to some unsuspecting deserving person, break it up and give it to several people or a favorite charity. Included in the letters I gave or sent out were included self addressed, stamped postcards for them to send back to me telling me how they used the money.

I mailed the ones that had to be mailed on Jan 1 and handed out in person the rest over the next week. To date I have receive about 45 postcards back. The stories are many and varied. Several people added to it, either to round it up to $100, or added their age. A few people combined it with other family members to make it a bigger sum. Several went to foods pantries, a dire need in this pandemic. Some went to grocery clerks, restaurant servers and delivery men. One went to a charity in upstate New York that makes beds and delivers them with mattresses and bedding to poor children who would otherwise be sleeping on the floor.  The story goes on. They have all been fun to read, making it my best birthday ever!

Lest you think I was at a big super spreader party, I was not. It was just my sister, her daughter and my bestie, Claire.  All vaccinated.

But I still did a lot of stitching this week. I did three more letters and then moved on to cute little stars or snowflakes, still just using straight stitches.  We had a lot of snow this week and I did some snow dyeing, too.

W  I was afraid that this would look just like the M that I did last week. But with the M I used straight lines for the legs and the inner V went down to the bottom of the legs. With the W I made slanted legs and the inner V only goes half way, so an entirely different look.

E Sort of a basket weave. 

F 

Two of my favorite snow dyes from this week. It's a funny thing, but green seems to be dominant. I thought I had spread an equal amount of blue and green dyes on these, but the green still shows through the most. And the dye grabber that I always add was a very dark green. Something to remember for the next time. I still have a LOT of snow on my deck, but I've had enough for now.

And that's it for this week, folks. Head on over to Off the Wall Friday and see what some other creative people are doing.