handicraftcrazy: Charity Box

Phew! I have just pruned about 30 palm branches off our palm trees (that some chump planted much too close to the house so they either swipe you in the face as you walk past or drip cold water down your neck!); wrestled them to the basura, (recycling point) without taking an eye out, or mortally wounding myself in any other way. Quite an achievement, these innocent looking leaves are viscious, if they manage to pierce flesh the wound rapidly gets inflamed and painful, only 'magic cream' (aka Savlon) will heal it.
That's my energy used up for the day so I reckoned I deserved a nice coffee and some bloggy time with you. During the year I come upon patterns that just scream 'make me', do you find that? Even when the thing in question is totally unsuitable for me or anyone I know. My particular weakness is baby things and before I had my own little grandson to make things for I always had little things just hanging around in case someone had a baby. Well, I solved the problem by having a special box to keep these things in, my Charity Box. I discovered through a friend that there was a battered women's shelter locally that always needed baby clothes. Mums often escape from violent partners with just the clothes on their backs, here was a perfect place to send my little stash of baby things, I've been doing that for a couple of years now.
Here are some of the things in my box right now

Just last week I heard that the local U3A had a 'knit and natter' group to make things for local poor people and my ears pricked up. In the building boom time a few years ago hundreds of workers were brought over to Spain to work on the building sites here for cash in hand, and of course since the bust they have been laid off with no work available and no benefits because they never paid into the system. Many are really destitute and can't get back home. The group is distributing donatations of clothes and blankets to these people. So the next batch from my box is going there. In between special projects I keep a stash buster project going, using up my odds and ends and these will go into the box eventually. I do sometimes wonder with all my WIM's how I will ever have enough years of life left to make everything I want to, but that's quite a nice problem to have isn't it?