felting (but not in Felton)

I've been taking stuff that looks like this:and turning it into stuff that looks like this:

A jewel in the squash

The family that hays together

.................NEWS FLASH.........................

I've exceeded my fundraising goal for the breastcancer 3 day walk! Woohoo!



This is so exciting and such a relief to me! When it's all said and walked, I'll post photos. For now I am so pleased to be able to relax a bit, and focus on the final preparations and training.

For those of you who haven't gotten around to donating, there is no need to despair. You can still donate at www.jenny3day.info or better yet go to my mother's page (she is working as part of the breast cancer 3 day crew) at http://www.the3day.org/site/TR/Walk/AtlantaEvent?px=1924214&pg=personal&fr_id=1181 and donate there.

Hoorah to everyone who donated. Your generosity has not gone unnoticed.

I've joined the army

The Army of Women, at www.armyofwomen.org

This is a partnership between women and researchers who will work together to discover the causes of breast cancer and how to prevent it.

Here is why this is important. There is only so much we can learn from animal studies (I know this from experience). Most current breast cancer research focuses on treating women who already have cancer. But wouldn't it be wonderful to find out what causes cancer in the first place so that we can prevent it from ever happening? That is what the Army of Women is trying to do. They hope to recruit ONE MILLION women willing to participate in various studies. Finding people to participate is one of the most difficult challenges many researchers face. The Army of Women will provide a large, willing pool of participants for researchers to draw from when they are doing an investigation. I've already signed up, I hope you and your friends and family members, coleagues and internet friends will too.

It is such an elegant and simple thing. You sign up as a volunteer. As new research projects come around they will send emails out looking for women with certain characteristics willing to participate. If you are interested, you let them know. It's that simple. You can do as much or as little as you want.

I've done this type of thing before for another study. It involved answering survey questions, and providing urine and blood samples. I've also donated saliva samples, cord blood samples, and breast milk samples for researchers. I'm probably a bit more gung-ho than the average Jane, but I feel these are small things I can do to help gain more insight into the bigger picture.

I'm so excited about this. I think this really is a way that we can all come together and make a difference. So, consider signing up. www.armyofwomen.org

A timely meme

So I got tagged by a book meme by my mother at News of the Boobs. These are the rules:
* Grab the nearest book.
* Open the book to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post the text of the next two to five sentences in your blog along with these instructions.
* Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.
* Tag five other people to do the same

So the closest true book is. . . . . . . . . . . . .Josefina Javelina: A Hairy Tale, by Susan Lowell and Illustrated by Bruce MacPherson

There is no page 56, so I'll work with page 5.

"Pasadena!' she cried. That's right next door to HOLLYWOOD!" And she burst out singing: "Let me go where the grass is greener!
I'll pack my tutu and concertina
And hit the road to Pasadena!"

So there you have it. Not the glamorous life of the intellectual, but the life of a mother and son who got his first Library card yesterday. This is one of the books he chose to check out. The other, of course, was about pirates.