the year of the knitted footwear & small beginnings

Since this blog started out as a craft blog, it seemed time to give an update on the knitting that has been happening this winter. I think I will coin this year the year of the knitted footwear. I just kept finding patterns for our feet! It's funny how there seems to be random themes that run throughout each knitting season - scarves and shawls, hats and hats and hats...and now, footwear. I will say I am starting to get intrigued by sweaters...but not right now. Springs seems to be in the air, and I am itching to go out with the boys and leave the warmth of knitting needles behind...just for a little bit.

The other thing that has been brewing at our house (and in my heart) is how to spend less and spend better...on many things, but starting small, beginning with our coffee. We don't drink a lot of coffee, but I was falling into a rut of always buying coffee out. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I just didn't like the way it was adding up...and the way I was always tempted to upgrade to a latte (yummm!). Occassionally, a latte is a wonderful treat (and I am not banning myself from ever buying lattes or coffees out), but regularly spending $3-4 on a cup of coffee was not my preference (don't worry, if you do, I don't think any more or less of you - everyone is different, I'm just speaking for myself!). I will say now that I have kids, buying a cup of coffee is so much easier than bringing out a mug of coffee, along with the kids and their gear and my bag and everything else. But it's doable. Or we slow down a bit more in the morning, and I actually just enjoy some coffee at my dining table. :) Well, anyway, I wanted to spend less on coffee. But not just spend less...spend better, spend smarter, spend more justly. And so I was excited to come across Land of a Thousand Hills Coffee Company at the Justice Conference. They not only make great coffee, and not only pay fair and just wages to the Rwandan farmers, but also they go further to try to promote forgiveness and reconciliation in a war-torn region full of a history of ethnic hatred and abuse. Many of my clients come from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Burundi, Somalia and Sudan...and as I work with them, the concept of hope and forgiveness often seems so distant and foreign. The Tutsi-Hutu divide seems unsurmountable; I write about it in applications and motions, but I don't really try to engage with the actual pain of it all - too much, too deep, too brutal. But organizations/businesses like Land of a Thousand Hills gives me hope in this...that change may be possible and healing may actually one day come, however small and however slow it may seem now.