Name That Blanket…Results!

November 25, 2016September 21, 2019thegreensheep 1 Comment

Thanks, everyone, for stirring up your creative juices to help name this blanket! You guys are great. This is the blanket that got packed up in an Operation Christmas Child box a couple of weeks ago. But as I was writing the blog post about it, I suddenly realized it had been sent out without a name. But names matter! Many of you came to the rescue, adding ideas on Facebook, Instagram, and this blog. A couple of you emailed me.

These are the wonderful ideas that came in. Making the final choice was difficult!

Blanket of Love
A Bright Beginning
Christmas Child
Promise
Pastel Peace
Colors of Love
Quiet Rainbow
Heaven’s Hues
God’s Perfect Promise
The Christmas Rainbow
A Rainbow of Love
Vibrant Love
A Box of Sherbet
Ribbon Candy
A Rainbow Promise Pocket

After much deliberation, the WINNER IS…

♥ THE CHRISTMAS RAINBOW ♥

I realized I wanted it to be a name that worked from a child’s perspective, so I tried to think like a little one. “The Christmas Rainbow” rose to the top because 1) I could imagine a child thinking it; 2) both “Christmas” and “rainbow” hold all the significance of the promise within each one of those; & 3) the blanket is not REALLY rainbow colors or rainbow sequence, but it is unusual, like a rainbow at Christmastime would be. Credit for “The Christmas Rainbow” name goes to Melissa Dugan.

And now this blanket can find its proper place in the world, since it has been named :)

[Click here for the full story of “The Christmas Rainbow.”]

A blanket for a stranger

November 19, 2016September 21, 2019thegreensheep 11 Comments

(“Strangers are friends you have yet to meet.”)

This is the final collection weekend for Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes. OCC is a faith-based global effort that sends off gifts packed in shoe boxes to children whose lives have been touched by disasters, war or poverty. I’ve known about this activity for years; I even know two wonderful young adults who were significantly affected by the shoe boxes they received as children in a Russian orphanage many years ago.

But I sheepishly admit I never packed a box myself until two weeks ago.

A few weeks ago, my church made available empty shoe boxes from OCC, and my small group (a baker’s-dozen of great women) decided to have a packing party of our own. We each volunteered to shop for 13 somethings–toothbrushes, toothpaste, pencils, pads of paper, candy, toys, wash cloths, bars of soap, socks, cards and more–and bring them together to pack boxes. (I picked up some of Ikea’s colorful children’s tableware.) We were each to also add one “Wow!” gift to our own box. My “Wow” gift was a soft, sweet-eyed, stuffed-animal puppy.

A few days before our packing night, both of our grown daughters (and 10-month-old granddaughter–gah!) happened to be visiting for the weekend. Saturday evening we popped in the DVD of a film recommended to me by a co-worker: The Drop Box. The seed for the film was planted when a young Los Angeles filmmaker (with Sundance aspirations) was eating breakfast one morning over the LA Times. On the front page, he read a story about a pastor in Korea who rescued unwanted babies by building a small warming box in the wall of his church, a “drop box” for newborns. The film is interesting, surprising, and to me, very moving. I came away with a renewed sense of the deep value of every single life.

As often happens in my brain, the experience of the film mingled with some other information up there in my head. In this case, I was thinking about a woman named Gift I’ve gotten to know a little this past year. Gift is from Zambia, and every year she raises money to send to her village for blankets for the women and children, who often do not have one of their own.

Sunday morning I woke up with one thought on my mind: I wanted to pack a wool blanket in my little shoe box, to let its young recipient know that she is one-of-a-kind in this wide, wide world, and someone somewhere was thinking about her.

So that Sunday morning I pulled out my stacks of already-cut strips of wool sweaters, to see what child-friendly combination I could assemble. But it wasn’t working. I needed to start from scratch. With those bright Ikea dishes nearby, I chose a rainbow of saturated colors and got to work. I had just been working on a custom-ordered child’s blanket with diagonal stripes and decided to repeat the pattern. I love its youthfulness and sense of movement.

As I was limited to the interior of a shoe box, I knew this blanket couldn’t be thick, so I chose cashmere, merino wool, and lambswool. The result? It’s exceedingly lightweight and yet cozy and warm.

I hope it can feel like a cuddle to a little girl.

I made our deadline and packed up my box. (In the photo, it looks like the blanket is taking up the whole box, but all the practical items are rolled up in the blanket.) Unfortunately, there was not enough room for that precious puppy. (Not for lack of trying, though! I even bought a bigger plastic box, but realized this would not feel fair to a group of kids on the receiving end.)

Of course, I likely will never meet the “5- to 9-year-old girl” this box is destined for. But I did learn from the woman at the collection counter that among the countries this batch of boxes is headed toward is Zambia :). Godspeed, little boxes!

“A Christmas Rainbow” (Size: 40″ x 50″)
Named by readers in this post here.
The blanket has already gone to a good home.

The pregnant pause before Christmas

December 15, 2015December 15, 2015thegreensheep 3 Comments

Early this morning, sitting in my pjs in my favorite wingback chair by our Christmas tree, I read:

“The LORD is in his holy temple;
Let all the earth be silent before him.”

— Habakkuk 2:20

It is 10 days until Christmas. Shopping is finished and gifts are wrapped. My hubby and I are driving to Michigan this weekend for a Christmas celebration with our kids. I’ve just managed to get things done early and it dawned on me that I am feeling a quiet lull before Christmas. Honestly, it seems extravagant at this time of year!

The sense of expectancy reminds me of the Christmas song “O Holy Night.” It tells the story of an incredible new joy dawning upon a waiting world:

O holy night! the stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of the dear Savior’s birth;
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.

A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn;
Fall on your knees…

We as a family wait in anticipation of two things this year. We recall the waiting of Mary and Joseph and of the Hebrew people over two thousand years ago: a weighty expectation for the promised Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, all fulfilled in the birth of the child Jesus (Isaiah 9:6). And we also wait on the coming of a child — a little girl! — within our own family, just days after Christmas. She’s right here, so close to arrival, but still a mystery.

I know the momentousness of these two births is very different, but the wondrous-ness is not. I praise God for them both, and feel that “thrill of hope” as we wait.

Merry Christmas to you all!

[You may also enjoy reading earlier Christmas posts from The Green Sheep: “A very good gift,” “A Christmas message that involves sheep,” and “The sheep at the stable.”]

Holiday Market!

November 13, 2015November 13, 2015thegreensheep 7 Comments

I’m spending today prepping blankets and props for a pop-up style holiday market tomorrow at our local Whispering Hills Garden and Landscape Center (8401 South IL Rte. 31, Cary — just south of Barn Nursery on the corner of Rakow and 31). I’m excited! It will be my first time setting up outdoors, with a pop-up canopy and all its accoutrements. My daughter Hope recently designed a great new banner for me (and two Vistaprint representatives happily modelled it).

The Green Sheep will be at Whispering Hills with 39 other vendors, including other Etsy sellers who live locally. Gah! That’s a lot of access to some wonderful and unique holiday shopping, all in one convenient place.

Please come out! There will be food trucks, music, door prizes and give-aways, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, November 14. Of course, the garden center has beautiful things of its own for decorating your home for the holidays. Here’s a quick little map: I’ve circled where I’ll be. Hope to see you there! And many thanks to Whispering Hills for the hard work of organizing this.

A very good gift

December 19, 2014December 19, 2014thegreensheep 18 Comments

I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

–John 10.10

Photo: Christian Lambert Photography on Flickr via Creative Commons

Neither my husband nor I speaks the language of gifts fluently. For each of us, there are other things that rank higher in importance, and that’s where we spend our energies. But my husband has a quality that simply amazes me: if you need something, he will drop just about anything in order to figure out a way to get that something done. I regularly see him do this for others, but this year he did something for me that was so impractical and so loving and so undeserved, I still get teary thinking about it.

The story actually begins, and not in a good way, on my birthday in February of 2013. We had gone out for a lovely birthday dinner and were on our way home when my car was rear-ended at a stoplight. It was a pretty big BUMP but we weren’t hurt and neither was the other driver, so the officer sent us all on our way, grateful, to home.

But then we learned that my beloved car, an 11-year-old previously-owned Mazda Tribute with a manual transmission, had been badly knocked awry and was declared totalled. Time to go car shopping.

That prospect might cause YOU joy and elation, but I wasn’t feelin’ it: we weren’t going to get much insurance money, so in addition to losing a car I was very fond of, we would be making a new financial investment, whether we bought new or used.

Now, in our 30-plus years of marriage, we have always bought used. (You are likely not surprised by that fact! This very blog is based on a fundamental recycling theme!) But this time we compared the options and, with a popular used car market driving up prices, my husband said (after countless hours of test drives with a disheartened wife), “Honey, I would just love to do this for you,” and we brought home a beautiful new white and shiny small SUV. I felt pretty stunned to be the recipient of this lovely gift.

The end.

Photo: Angelina Vukel on Flickr via Creative Commons

Oh, wait; that is not the end. Honestly, that car was a LOVELY gift, but it did not turn out to be the gift in this story.

I drove that car for over a year but somehow never felt attached to it. It was beautiful and comfortable…but not really my style. And I felt that most acutely when I, the check-writer for the two of us, paid its monthly car payment. It took me a long time to tell my kind husband this truth.

We talked about trading my car in, but I didn’t want to go through the hassle, I hated that we’d lose money on it, etc., etc., etc. But he wouldn’t give up that easily. We’d done so much car-shopping and test-driving that he knew what I liked and soon he had some great used cars picked out — relatively late models with low mileage and lower price tags than my shiny new vehicle had. His research brought to my attention a car I hadn’t taken notice of before — as Hyundai had stopped making them after 2012: the Elantra Touring. I fell in love with all the practical qualities of that car: its low profile, good fuel economy, and great cargo space.

And then that charming guy of mine showed me one with a manual transmission. My heart leapt within me. I hadn’t realized how much I missed the delight of driving a stick shift.

Photo: Monika & Manfred on Flickr via Creative Commons

You know how I said these cars were no longer made? And how I liked it a lot? Apparently many other car owners feel the same because this vehicle is not too common in the used market. Local ones were either weirdly bright colors (my apologies to the owners of those colors — I’m happy that variety can be the spice of your life!) or in wrecky shape. Did my husband try to talk me out of this car? No, his brain went into another dimension and — I’m telling the truth — this is what happened:

One Thursday afternoon, my husband calls me at work and casually says, “I have a verbal agreement with a dealer in Massachusetts for a beautiful black Touring with a manual transmission and just 18,000 miles on it. CarMax has offered a good price for your current car. So can I ask for your help when you get home from work? We’ll go to CarMax and trade in your car, and then you can drop me off at Chicago O’Hare to catch an evening flight to Boston Logan, and then I’ll take a 3-hour bus ride to Dartmouth…”

[To understand this picture fully, you need to know how much I would never do this, this thing so quixotic, so complicated, so uncalled-for and — honestly — so crazy. Me? I’m the one who efficiently lines up all my errands like a UPS driver, ticking my way through them with right-hand turns, wasting neither time nor money, and getting home to cook a sensible dinner. I attribute this to my German and Scottish ancestors. Why should anyone put everything on hold and go to all this outlandish trouble for a CAR??]

Well, he pulled it off with barely a hitch: from trade-in to flight to bus-ride to dealing with the car salesman to working out a legal way to drive home without proper plates in this out-of-state purchase to driving over 1000 miles back to northern Illinois. And I never caught a single note of stress in his voice when we talked by phone.

On Saturday evening, my tired husband pulled into our driveway with a smile on his face and one of the most thoughtful, fun gifts I have ever received.

I tell you this story because to me it is a tender glimpse of the way God gives gifts — beyond my imagination, always undeserved, with details only he could orchestrate, and with a care-free generosity I cannot wrap my care-full mind around. This in fact is the story of Christmas and the gospel, beginning with the unusual birth of the baby Jesus — who came that we might have life and have it abundantly.

The unanticipated joy God the Father throws in is a bonus.

“Butterflies for Momma”

November 24, 2012July 18, 2014thegreensheep 3 Comments

As promised, here is the companion to the blanket I posted yesterday. (Read more about “Peace” here.) These blankets are Christmas gifts for a pair of sisters from a third sister, Maureen. Don’t tell! These were ordered and designed in remembrance of their mom.

So finally, here is “Butterflies for Momma” :

The assignment: two different blankets for two different sisters but each meaningful in its own right. I was put to the test again! But as always happens, the sweaters and the colors and the wool itself all guided me with their ever-surprising capability to inspire.

For this blanket, Maureen had told me that butterflies remind this particular sister of her mother’s presence. And then Maureen said, “You can make it colorful!” Was this the kind of colorful she had in mind? I’m not sure! But I do believe it’s full of color and light and tranquility too. Here the border hints of a trellis or an arbor, a pleasant place from which to watch these delightful flitting creatures.