Thursday, 09 December 2010
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Project Linus and being "blanketeers!"
As you may have guessed, we really enjoy Disney World, so when the ad campaign came out late last year to “Give a Day, Get a Disney Day“, I thought I’d see if there was something we could do together to volunteer.
The process was easy; search through hundreds of opportunities all over the United States as well as Puerto Rico and Canada. Give a day of service, and get a free day at Disney. At $79 per ticket, that’s a deal for us. So we started hunting.
In Albion, Pennsylvania, we found Project Linus, whose mission is to”provide love, a sense of security, warmth and comfort to children who are seriously ill, traumatized, or otherwise in need through the gifts of new, handmade blankets and afghans, lovingly created by volunteer “blanketeers.” “
How great is that?!
As I have a huge closet full of fabrics, lots of pairs of scissors and a sewing machine, we went to work. The Doctor and Little Miss cut out squares, and I’ve been sewing for a couple of weeks now in the evenings, piecing together quilts.
The Cabana Boy has pitched in supervising, and pinning fleece backs on the quilts. Little Miss is also my official cutter–as I put together strings of squares, she cuts the threads apart and gives them back to sew even longer strings. It suits her sense of order.
We’ve had a really good time, and we’ll be donating probably ten quilts total by the time we sew up all these squares.
Two of our creations, with proud participants
You might have noticed I didn’t mention the Captain above. This is because like the immortal Bartleby, the Asperger’s child preferred not to. His exact words were “That sounds like too much work for one day.”
So we took him at his word. When we go to Florida later in the year, I expect he’ll stay here with a relative. The decision has typified his thought process of late; he doesn’t choose effort in any field, home, school or family. We hope by making him live with the natural consequences of his choices, maybe someday he’ll “get it.”
As I sew these bits of fabric together, I think about the children who might have them, and hope they can find the sense of love and family togetherness that we have, in creating them.
Barbara Bush said, “To us, family means putting your arms around each other and being there.”
Even if we can’t hug these children, these blankets can wrap around them and remind them they’re loved.
To find a chapter of Project Linus near you, see here.
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- From: awalkabout
- About Me: I’ve been writing ever since I was a little girl, unable to control the urge of stories that wanted to percolate through my fingers into the keyboard. Or back then, onto the old Royal typewriter. (Before the TRS-80 even! Wow!) It’s a learning process and I’m still at it, still writing and learning about craft, style, synopsis, agents, editors and more! I’ve had some moderate success, for which I’m grateful, but I’m still working hard, with my ultimate goal to have novels in print. In the meantime, I’m keeping my day job as a family law attorney, my night job as parent to three children with special needs, and writing when I can. As the computer age enters its prime, I wanted to expand my writing universe onto the World Wide Web, and here I am! Don’t be frightened! :) Also see: My office site: www.mountjoylaw.com My writing site: www.awalkabout.net My page at Firefox: Firefox News articles
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Comments (4)
Isn't it a great charity? My mom volunteered during recess at my elementary school to teach kids to knit and crochet squares for the Linus Project. If you come across any polar fleece in your fabric drawer, I'll bet the kids would be excited to do a no-sew blanket all by themselves!
I may not be a parent or personally know someone with Asperger's, but what if you tried encouraging him to participate in the volunteering?
The decision has typified his thought process of late; he doesn’t choose effort in any field, home, school or family. We hope by making him live with the natural consequences of his choices, maybe someday he’ll “get it.”
This sounds a bit like depression. Depressed individuals have a tendency to make poor choices which lead to corresponding consequences, which only worsens the depression. Unconditional love is often more helpful for depression than natural consequences.Well, you probably tried encouraging him, but I'd rather say something obvious than find out later that I could have done more than staying silent.
They look fantastic, what a wonderful idea. You know him better than we do, so maybe letting him see the consequences would be the most effective. That, and sometimes with Asperger's, you have to pick your battles.
I've received a lot of these blankets when I was in the hospital! I think I have four or five on my bed right now and a few more in my closet. We were able to choose them as a prize if we had gotten a lot of "points" that day on our points card. (Points were awarded for cooperating with vital signs, meeting with doctors, taking treatments, finishing meals, etc.). The amount of points you got determined if you were on lower shelf, first shelf, second shelf, third shelf, or fourth shelf, and the blankets were on fourth shelf because they were so popular. I also got a pillow case from a similar organization, Conkerr Cancer, that I have on my pillow right now. Project Linus is awesome!