woolythyme

home....

Ghana.  You overwhelmed me. 

The colors!

The music!

The dancing!

The street scenes!

 

The kids!

I love you, too.

 

It was at least 300 degrees in the shade....and he was wearing a sweater!  

I love this kid!!!

Way down yonder in....Oxford, MS???

Lake Andrew...outside of Oxford MS.

Site of the 55th Clean Water U.*  Once a year I get to spend time with this motley crew some of my favorite people in the world during our April training week.

Everyone is still smiling....students come tomorrow.

Today we took time to put out a couple fires, have some snacks, find a few MIA teaching things, eat a little junk food, meet and greet some early arriving international students, do some serious snack shopping, and then we dined on a gourmet Moroccan dinner prepared by one of our LWW friends (can you tell eating is a very big part of the week?)

 

 I squeezed in some 'cram-time' for my photography 'final'....(due when I get home).... 

10 photos smushed together into a panorama.  Check. (I bet there is a technical term for 'smushed'...hope it's not on the final.)

 

Found a little patch of irises...

for some macro playtime. 

Now, before all the students arrive (and this is one of the biggest 'classes' we've ever had---my job, with lots of good help, is to keep all these people happy and in line!)----it's time to move on to the serious stuff...

knitting.....

and..........

maybe a little more snacking.

 

*Clean Water U is the volunteer-based educational arm of Living Waters for the World.  The group teaches mission team development of cultural relationships in developing countries, facilitation of water purification system installation, and health, hygiene and use of that most precious commodity----water.  (Around that table alone...those people represent 129 systems in 8 countries.)  

World Water Day.....let's celebrate

How lucky we are that we don't have to carry our water with us...

that we don't have to worry about whether that clean-looking water is safe to drink...

(a flushing toilet!)

663 million people in the world (that's 10% of the world's population) are not so lucky....access to clean water is a dream, not a way of life.  

Lots of organizations around the world are working to improve these statistics; Living Waters for the World just happens to be the one I work with.

As you toss your clothes in the washing machine...

remember those who can't.

 

As you turn on your faucet for a quick,refreshing drink...

think of those who have to work really hard for their drink...with no guarantee that it's safe to drink when they get it.

 

I'd love for you to join me in fighting the water crisis....so someday Living Water's dream of 'clean water for all God's children' will be a reality.

 

Let's celebrate!

Happy World Water Day, 2017....March 22.

back to normal....

Freddy here.  

IT'S!MONDAY!AND!MY!MOM!IS!HOME!AND!SO!AM!I!!!!SO!I!CAN!WRITE!HERE!IN!MY!MONDAY-SPACE!!!

Can  you believe, I had to go to camp AGAIN?!? this weekend?  

I almost missed the Super Bowl (I did get bailed out in time), but I must admit I was pretty disappointed.  I kept hearing mom say she didn't have a dog in this fight (of course not.  I'm her dog.  I don't fight---ever. Never would.)  

And then, instead of dogs....all I had to watch were very big men fighting and throwing a ball.  I'm old.  Balls don't thrill me the way they did when I was a pup. 

My Buddha Ball, though--now that's a different story!

I think I currently own the world's record for opening this.  I thought I was pretty good at it when I could open it in under a minute.  But since I've sort of stripped the threads holding it together----sometimes I get the treat out and in my tummy in under 5 seconds. Good, huh?

I'm happy to report that the suitcase disappeared to the scary basement.  (I know it's scary because I have actually been forced to the scary basement a time or two when the tornado sirens go off. Someone has to carry me there.  It's scary.  I don't do scary.)

Anyway, Mom and Dad apparently went somewhere very very fun without me.

See mom??  See her? See her???            RIGHT!IN!THE!MIDDLE!WITH!THE!BLACK!COAT!AND!ALL!THE!KNITTED!THINGS!ON!HER!HEAD!AND!NECK!!!AND!HANDS!!!  

Daddy's there, too.  

They call these people their Living Waters for the World Family and they were on a family retreat.......at a camp.  

 

Wait a minute.  

They sent ME to camp....so THEY could go to camp?!?

What's wrong with this picture?  I'm family. Why didn't we all go to family camp together?? 

home.....but not for long

El Salvador was incredibly beautiful in so many ways....the landscape, the sea, the people.  

We were driving between water sites...going up one volcano down another...this shot was from the top of a mountain, looking out over the two volcanoes we had traversed earlier in the day.  The haze is from the sugar cane being burned below; the smoke filled the whole valley.

 

I learned so much on this trip....this city girl thought cashews grew like peanuts?!? (actually, not sure I ever thought about how they grow!)  Surprise!  No wonder they are so expensive!

Hubby was helping to repair a system in a clinic in Santa Cruz next to the school.  This little guy was heading home for lunch....obviously he had had a rather thirsty morning....three bottles to refill for the afternoon.
 

We visited ACAMS, a women's cooperative (they were distributing toilets that day----how could I have missed that photo op?!?) in Tejutepeque.  Kristina is the operator in charge of the water purification system....this is the unfiltered water tank in her bedroom on the roof of the center that will travel by gravity to the filters and bottling station below.  The water she bottles is distributed throughout the whole community.

This guy was caged in the middle of our lunch stop. I'm hoping he was just another 'pet'....they had cages of parakeets next to him;  one parakeet was sitting at the open front window, greeting diners and overseeing the cooking in the kitchen.

 

Meet Angelique.  She and I played peek while hubby was training her mom and some other new operators in Cinquera.  Beautiful little town that was heavily bombed during the 1980's civil war.

'Trophies' retrieved by the resistance are proudly displayed in the town square.  The church was miraculously untouched here, but about two miles down the road, we saw the skeletal remains of another church.  That community was nearly wiped out because the residents took refuge in the church before it was obliterated.

San Salvador is the current capital of the country, but Suchitoto was briefly the capital immediately following the war. 

This church is the heart of the town...built by the Spaniards in the 18th century to honor St. Lucia.  Nearby is the man-made Suchitlan Lake.

 

We spent only one day at the beach...

more beach glass than I've ever found before...

 

Of course, there was beach knitting... 

and I had great hopes of making major headway on the 17 hour trip home.

 

My needles were confiscated at the airport (in El Salvador)...

 

but, I'm back on track now (with plain old addis...can you believe they got my addi lace ones???!?)

 

(The main purpose of this trip was to network with Salvadoran Rotary members and share information on some of the Living Waters for the World sites in the country.  Our LWW booth looked like any old booth in any old conference center in any place in the world.  I won't bore you. But I do have 400+ more country pictures....just warning you!) 

 

and yes....the suitcases aren't even getting put away this time...shhhhhhh.  Don't tell Freddy.

Plan A, B, C...

I'm always a little bit sad when I have to pack up my bags and leave not only what was a lovely getaway at a stellar location, but leave friends.  They are so generous sharing their time and home...I know we'll be back sometime, but it's still hard to leave.

The leave-taking was made just a smidge harder this year because it was raining.  I love rainy days.  Especially, rainy days at the beach.  You know, those days when you don't have to go anywhere, do anything, are responsible for no one.  A perfect day to cozy up with a good book and some knitting and go.no.where! (sigh)

But, off we went....with a Plan A, a Plan B, and a firm Plan C.  We needed them all.  

Plan A:  Sandwich Glass Museum was one of the featured venues on Free Heritage Friday, so we thought we'd stop there on our way off the Cape.  (We had visited the Heritage Gardens in Sandwich a couple years ago and it was wonderful.  If you've never been, you really must go!!!)  We didn't think we would stay there too terribly long, so we had time to check out....(drum roll, please!) a yarn shop on the way.  

A Great Yarn really IS not only a great yarn store, but a very nice little used book shop.  (I'm definitely dragging my non-knitting-but-book-reading friends there the next time we do our bookshop crawl!) The yarn selection couldn't be nicer.  They carried just about all my very favorite yarns, but this was vacation still and I concentrated on 'souvenir' yarns.  (They had an abundance!!!)

Meet Chatham by hauteknityarn, an indie dyer who takes colour inspiration from nature.  This merino/nylon/cashmere yarn is as luscious to fondle as it is to look at. They featured it using the Siren Song shawl pattern, which I most likely will copycat.  It was lovely!!!  (Yes...that IS blue.  Tempered nicely by the grey,though, and knit up--the grey really shines through!!!!... and this IS souvenir yarn, remember, and the Cape is surrounded by water...and those Provincetown skies were a cloudless perfect blue...and would you like me to rationalize this any more???)

Maybe I should, because I also bought this same colourway in sock yarn...

(See how all that grey is already popping out?)  Love it.

A couple more purchases there, including a cool knitting gizmo I'd never seen before and a membership in their yarn of the month club from the same indie dyer and we were off to Sandwich....

Where we got a sandwich, ate under an umbrella outside in the rain, ditched Plan A and fought the bumper-to-bumper traffic back to the highway.  (Those free Heritage Days are CRAZY!!--we would have been hours in line just to get IN the museum.  No time for that.)

Plan B:  Lexington and Concord if the rains stops by the time we get there.  

The rain stopped.  The sun came out.  And the bumper to bumper traffic continued.  It never let up.  We were supposed to meet someone interested in knowing more about Living Waters for the World.  He was going to pick us up at our hotel at 3.  At 2:30 we waved to Lexington and Concord as we drove by.  At 2:45 he called and said he was stuck in traffic, too, so would be delayed.

Plan C:  We'd meet up at 4:00.  Which we did.  Little did we know that we'd be thrown back into the traffic for another 2 hours (I'm not kidding, I've never seen traffic like this!!!) as he drove us to his home (one of the coolest, loft condos in an old refurbished wire factory....I'd move there in a heartbeat!) for dinner and a meet-up with some members of his congregation from Cameroon.  Delicious meal, delightful new friends, and the beginning of what will eventually result in clean water flowing in a school serving 500 students in Cameroon.  

The return trip to our hotel was a mere 40 minutes. 

Just enough time to finish the last of the vacation knitting.

It was a very good day. 

 

 

 

 

my week.....at cwu

It's been a week of building fires....and putting out a few proverbial ones.

 

A week of enjoying God's handiwork....

 

and meeting new friends.*

 

 

 

*'Clean Water U' where Living Waters for the World teams are trained for mission work with water purification systems and health and hygiene.

yarnalong...

Reading:  Ann Patchett's The Magician's Assistant.  One review has said this is one of her best.  But, to tell you .... it's the story of a gay magician's assistant who has been in love with the magician her whole life, who eventually marries him after his partner dies---just months before he dies, after which she discovers the man she married is a total stranger with deep dark secrets.... would you really believe it IS one of her best?   Trust me.  It's good.

Knitting:  Twinleaf by Grace Anna Farrow.  Another lovely large shawl that is hardly started.

 

Neither is getting much attention.  It's a Living Waters for the World training week---with 60 students and 16 instructors; set-up is nearly complete...

and now the fun begins!!!

retreating....

I spent the weekend with about 40 of my best friends.  Really.  And to think.....about a quarter of them I hadn't met until Friday night.  It's that kind of group.  

It was a working weekend....to see where the organization (Living Waters for the World) was heading, to assure sustainability for the projects ----for today, tomorrow, and future generations.

 

 

There was time for a little walk

 

to the chapel in the woods

 

'my' bench by the labyrinth

 

view of our room...(yeah, I left the light on so I could see which room was ours----I ran over and turned it out, though, after I took the picture! promise.  I did.)

 

We toured the Eco House....the floors!!!!!

bottles...

 

conveyor belts (the conveyor-prayer floor)

 

can you guess?

paper mache!

because of the colors, they call this one the s'mores-floor....

 

the tiles here were made by some of the Jonesboro and Columbine students who came for counseling....

it's 5 o'clock somewhere

 

The exterior walls are made of straw, the interior walls were first insulated with rice hulls (oops that was a mistake....bugs!!!....had to remove it all and restuff with cellulose)...solar heating (the building is used for 'solar school')

 

yes, we worked.

 

What a group.

always time for a little reading and knitting....

There are always peaks and valleys to booth 'activity'....on the first day of serious meetings, the exhibition booths have a bit of 'quiet time'.

 

The Boy Scouts must have given out most of their frisbees, because the entertainment switched to cornhole...

(gotta love those Compassion, Peace, and Justice folks for dragging cornhole all the way to Detroit!)

and 'inflatable soccer'...

It was also a good time to cruise some of the other agencies, projects, and issues in the exhibition hall, and pick up some reading material.

While there are a bajillion worthy topics represented, occasionally you stumble upon something that simply resonates with you, your current lifestyle and beliefs, and is something that you can incorporate into your daily life...if not easily, then at least consciously.

Among some of the fascinating literature I picked up...

• Postcards to send to Kroger, urging them to end poverty and slavery in the (produce) fields (particularly tomatoes)  http://www.pcusa.org/fairfood

Florida farmworkers earn on average 45-50 cents for every 32 lb bucket of tomatoes they pick.  In extreme cases, workers are held against their will and forced to labor in modern-day slavery.  To date, seven cases of such slavery have been successfully prosecuted and over 1,000 slaves have been freed.

 

    11 corporations and over 90% of Florida tomato growers are now participating in the Fair Food program that is working to end these abuses.  Kroger, Publix, and Ahold are NOT among them.  (see if Kroger gets any more of my produce $$$$.  Granted, it's farmer's market season---they wouldn't have gotten much anyway, but come fall, they still won't get any.)

• Enough for Everyone  is an advocacy program promoting simpler lifestyles and responsible consumerism (ie fair trade, locally grown, sweatshop-free)  I don't do nearly enough; I'm reminded to do better.  http://www.presbyterianmission.org/enough

 

 

On the needles (at least a little longer...I'm on the last ball of yarn I brought along for this project...never fear, there is a yarn store's worth of other yarn still in the bag!)---Wheaten.   I'm still rather ambivalent about the color, but it's growing on me as it grows in length.

 

Joining with Ginny , Nicole, and Tami