Our latest bouquet

We have been very busy making flowers for our "bouquet". I had mentioned before that we had invaded Rhonda's home and had a day long gathering with "Gene Shepard" via his book and CD and we have been producing and having fun with these flowers which we are hoping to sell. Our goal is to make as many as we can and again, the proceeds will go to the Women of the Congo. I will keep you posted on our progress and hopefully some great news in the future. If you see any that you like, let us know and we can keep it aside for you. All it takes is $15.00!!!

The Rug Went on the Road

We took a little road trip just recently to visit with the ladies at the Beaconsfield Rug Hooking group in Beaconsfield, Quebec. We had such a warm welcome and you can see here two of the rug hookers who purchased flowers from our bouquet of flowers. Denise, the president of the group, came to Canada from Brussels, Belgium about six years ago and has now settled quite well into life in Canada. Thank you ladies for such a warm reception and we hope to see you again sometime soon. You too can visit with them online at www.beaconsfieldrughookers.com.

A Red Hat Challenge

Here is one of the beautiful women that we get to spend our time with every Monday. What a blessing!! Eleanor is a proud Nova Scotian who now makes the Thousand Islands her home. A retired nurse (there are many in our group) and anyone of us would want to have her looking after us in a time of need. Warm, witty, and to paraphrase her, a dear soul!! She has only been hooking for about 5 years although she remembers her Mother & Grandmother doing it when she was a young girl. Eleanor has extended a challenge to the rest of us.....we get together 30 red and purple flowers and Eleanor is going to present them to her Red Hatters group and I bet that all 30 will disappear. Let's go girls.

The Start of our Bouquet

Just wanted to let you get a peek at the start of our "proddy flower brooches" that we hope to sell with the proceeds going to our Congo project. What do you think? Anyone interested in buying some let us know - we will be taking them on the road with us to various hook-ins, they are a "must have" for every women's fashion complement.

A Day of Learning - Proddy Flower Brooches

Don't you just love our model.....we were at Rhonda's home on Tuesday and we all participated in a day of doing Proddy Flower brooches. We had Gene Shepherd on the TV for our lessons and with all the wealth of rug hooking knowledge in our group, neophytes like me just "prodded" along. We had such a great day and once we have perfected the technique we are hoping to take our brooches on the road with us so that we can sell them for our Congo Project. There is never a shortage of laughter, sharing and food when we get together like this. As soon as we get a few together I will post a "bouquet" for all to see.

AC 360 Blog

I was having a little trouble sleeping the other night so I went up and turned on the TV and was watching Anderson Cooper 360. Ben Affleck was on sharing his experiences when he went to the DRC and is speaking out about what is going on. Now I am really awake so I went to my computer and knowing that they have a blog and that people can leave comments for all to see, I thought OK here I go, what do I have to lose. I just did a little blurp about our concerns about the women of the Congo and put in our blog address. All this at 3am in the morning.....but we are on there. Check out AC 360 blog. We have to be diligent about taking any possible advantage to get our project out there so that we can realize our dream of helping some of those unfortunate women in the Congo. When you listen to some of their stories, we too have to gain strength from these women and how they carry on despite what is happening to them and those around them.

Happy Valentine's Day to Lavender Wool

Yesterday Women Matters received a wonderful gesture from the ladies at Lavender Wool. I just had to share this with everyone. What a wonderful idea and thank you so much. Women Matters were supposed to meet last Tuesday for a day of hooking brooches but we came up against Mother Nature and you know when that happens sometimes we just don't win. As it turned out the freezing rain they were forecasting never happened but we had decided to cancel. We are together again on Monday and Tuesday of this coming week. Our generous donation of "valentines" wool will probably be used for our garden of flower brooches that we hope to churn out to raise money and awareness of the Women of the Congo.

By the way, did anyone see Ben Affleck on Anderson Cooper last night? It would appear that he has also decided to speak out about the atrocities happening in the Eastern Congo.

Happy Valentine's Day to all that read this, to the ladies at Lavender Wool and to the Women of the Congo....you are in our hearts.