Cheap thrills

Today, we went to WalMart to buy a dish drainer. It is going to be several weeks before our groovy new dishwasher arrives, so we decided that probably getting something to put drying dishes in would be a good idea. As opposed to spreading three or four kitchen towels all over every flat surface in the kitchen and then later hanging three or four sodden kitchen towels up on every hangable surface all over the kitchen. (We are so not set up to hand wash a significant amount of dishes around here. What pansies!!)

Naturally, we came home with the aforementioned dish drainers…and a set of car mats for my husband's car…and five skeins of baby yarn.

The baby yarn set me back almost $20 – more than double the cost of what we actually went there to get. And for a moment I thought, "Geez. I have got to knock it off with the baby-yarn-buying thing…especially given that I don't have any specific baby to knit for right now…"

But. Get this. From that $20 worth of yarn, I expect to be able to make:

2 Christening gowns
8 wee little premie-newborn size sweaters, and
Maybe 5 or 6 little hats from the scraps

That's a pretty good bang for the buck.

It's also going to five me roughly forty hours worth of knitting time. An activity which, as I may have mentioned once or twice, I find deeply enjoyable. Doubly so when I'm knitting for babies. It's like…a hug that stays. And every button a permanent kiss.

AND THEN, what do I get to do?

I get to send them off to Stitches from the Heart. So that other mothers don't have to take home their precious babies in those Dog-awful hospital issue clothes. I make things in a variety of sizes, from so tiny you'd think it was for a doll to "normal" newborn size.

Which makes me feel really, really good. Really good. Like I can reach out to other moms who might be having a hard time of things and let them know…I care about their baby. I want their baby to be happy, and healthy, and warm, and loved.

That's an awful lot of good for twenty lousy bucks.

And it's all machine wash and dry, to boot.

Now, what could be more perfect than that?!