Felt Stockings and Other Things

A dear friend who helped me prepare dinners this past fall for our church's Wednesday Night Dinners asked me if I would help her with a Christmas project in which she participates. Each year volunteers sew hundreds of Christmas stockings to be filled with goodies and delivered to homeless vets. She already had the felt pieces cut out - all I had to do was decorate them and sew them up.

My confidence in my sewing led me to ask her for two dozen, and I have to confess that I ended up asking another friend to take a dozen of them to complete! These little stockings were more of a challenge than I anticipated! I have little imagination when it comes to decorating, so I turned to Pinterest to find samples of felt stockings. Decorations couldn't just be glued on - everything had to be sewn on just to make sure the stockings remain intact from the time they are filled until they are delivered. Some of the decorations were too small to attach with a sewing machine, so I did a lot of hand sewing. And I had to search for a tutorial to see how to sew the stockings together to hide the seams of the cuff at the top. It was like it was my first time sewing.

In spite of my difficulties, it was a joy and an honor to do these stockings. How sad that the words "homeless" and "vets" are even in the same sentence; nevertheless there is apparently a disproportionately large percentage of homeless people who are veterans. As I worked on the stockings I prayed and thought about who would receive them and that they would be blessed in some way.

My cat Katy was involved in her very special way.

In other news Randy and I celebrated 45 years of marriage and traveled to Dallas to visit our daughter and son-in-law. Our anniversary is the day before our baby girl's birthday, so we often get together for our two events. We ate at Gordon Biersch and had a wonderful evening. I gave her the Secrets and Dreams Journal to use for her iPad or as a journal - she was delighted - yay!