Been reading a bit here lately...

I have not been doing a whole lot of crafting lately because I am reading this book. It is really good, very sobering, but really good. It makes me glad I live in the US, I can tell you that much. It is one woman's story of her journey to adopt her daughter, Kelly, from China. In her struggle to try to give her daughter a past and a heritage she began to discover just how difficult it is for girls/women in China and to understand why there are so many baby girls that wind up homeless in orphanages. (And many others who never make it that far.) Some of the things she tells of are horrific. To me the government mandates that are inflicted upon the people, women in particular, are unfathomable. Forced abortions (even late term when the baby could survive outside the womb), forced sterilizations, government mandated (and monitored) IUD's and "family planning" personnel in factories whose job it is to report anyone they think might be hiding a pregnancy just to name a few. Many babies are killed immediately after birth, drown in a bucket or smothered in a box of ashes. Some families are able to hide their newborn girls, but if they are not registered at birth, technically they don't exist. They can never go to school or receive medical treatment. It is no wonder there are so many abandoned babies. These mothers risked everything in order to ensure that their babies remained alive. They abandon them in the hopes that a kindhearted person will care for them or that they will be adopted. Since it is techically illegal to kill a baby or abandon a baby, these babies are usually turned over to the police who then take them to the nearest orphanage. The social pressure to produce male children is so strong that often these women have no choice when the baby is a girl. They can literally be thrown out of their homes into the street for giving birth to a girl instead of a boy. Either the baby girl is killed at birth or abandoned. Those are the choices that so many women are faced with. What a heartwrenching predicament. How do you face that situation? Anyway, sorry for rambling, I am just dealing with a lot of emotion from reading these things and thinking about the little girl I hope to someday adopt from China. How do you communicate these sorts of things to her and help her to know that she is worth more than anything and that she wasn't just cast aside because no one wanted her because she was a girl? Anyway, a difficult but very good read.

Now on to more pleasant things, seems my blog has been a bit depressing lately....

The kitty from the humane society got adopted, so that made me happy. J and I had almost decided to go and get him when I checked the site back again and he was gone off of the site. He had only been there a week and a half and they were nowhere near their cat capacity, so I feel confident that he got a home. J even had him renamed! LOL I wanted to sleep on it for a night, then I was going to call the shelter and say if he didn't get a home by the time his time was up (the are NOT a no kill shelter) then to call me and I would take him. Glad he got a home.

I worked on the yellow and blue quilt just a little bit on Sunday. I got the yellow border on. I still have to cut the strips for the blue border and piece them together and put them on then I will be ready to sandwich the quilt and start quilting it.

I know two people who have had baby girls in the last two weeks. One I don't know really well, but I think I will finish one of the embroidered receiving blankets from my list of 33 (or so) and give it to her. The other people are friends of ours from Colorado that we traveled with about 10 years ago with Carpenter's Tools International. I had a couple pieces of pink flannel prints in my stash so I bought another one to coordinate with them and a solid pink for the back. I think I will do a quick, small railfence quilt for them. I wasn't sure what to bind a flannel quilt with, though. Any thoughts? I have never made a flannel quilt before, so this will be fun. I plan on washing it after I make it so that it gets that crinkly look to it.

I also am thinking about making this for Alexa, my almost 6 year old niece for her birthday in April. Alas she is not a girly girl, so much. She doesn't care for the dresses any more. She only wears them for a picture and that is it, they never get put on again and I have decided that they are way too much work to only be worn once or twice so I have quit making them for her. :(
Here is the last one I made for her.



That is about it for now. I think I'll head back to my book for a bit.
Have a great evening!