Knitting: It's Controversially Boring

Ethan isn’t the only kid whom thinks knitting is boring. The other day, I got to sit in the lobby of the Taekwondo studio because my husband was home to watch James. Once Ethan’s class started, I hauled out my knitting and got to work. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a dimpled hand pointing to the sweater.
“What are you doing?” asked a wide-eyed 3-year-old boy in a karate uniform.
“I’m knitting,” I said.
“What’s that?” he said.
“It’s when you take yarn and make stuff with it, like sweaters,” I said. I didn’t think my explanation sufficed, but soon the boy got interested in a teenage couple necking and left me to ask his mom what they were doing.
Later, my ears pricked up to hear one of Ethan’s classmates ask him what I was doing.
“She’s, um, knitting,” Ethan said. “She does it all the time.”
I guess to a 7 year old, 2 ½ hours a week constitutes all the time.





Did you know your old cell phone could help save the lives of people living in rural Africa? It can, thanks to an innovative new program called Hopephones.org, which was started by Josh Nesbit, a student at Stanford University. Hope Phones is a nationwide mobile phone collection campaign that makes use of old cell phones in the U.S. to provide phones for clinics and healthcare workers in the developing world. According to the organization’s Web site, the program has helped a hospital in rural Malawi give 150 patients emergency care. In addition, community health workers saved 1,000 hours of travel time, which they used to visit more patients, the number of people being treated for Tuberculosis doubled, and the hospital saved $3,500 worth of fuel, which was used to purchase medication.
So my Thrifty Green Thursday tip of the week is put your old cell phone to good use by donating it to Hopephones.org. To see more tips, click here.