A New WIP for IHSW

What a lovely and long weekend for me here in the States and it coincided with our stitching weekend. We celebrated the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr. on Monday which meant no work for me and no school for the girls. And how did I spend it??? Yes, stitching, of course!!

Yes, I finally felt human enough to follow a pattern and work on some cross-stitching. I took a break (again) from the baby sampler to work on a bookmark for a friend's daughter. I just learned that an old high school friend of mine is having fundraisers and is worried about his 10-year-old daughter, Lori, who has Rhabdomyosarcoma Alveolar. This is a cancer of the muscles and it typically is found in children.

Well, my heart just ached for her. I watched my husband and another friend of ours go through cancer treatment, and I see the agony of yet another friend of mine who monitors her son's remission status. What a horrible disease cancer is!! 

As soon as I learned of Lori's condition, I purchased this great chart by Imaginating:

And I got to stitching on the bookmark. I know that Lori is going through some serious chemotherapy, so there will be plenty of times she will be too tired and sick for anything at all, but I also know she'll have plenty of time to read. So, I went with the bookmark for Hope. I'm going to change the color of the word and the ribbon to gold for Lori, and once it's done, I'll finish it with a backing and send it to her with a card.

My progress was pretty good - all things considering with my health. I had to take frequent breaks because I would get dizzy, but it was really nice to not waste the "free time" on the couch any longer. (The flu has been brutal this year for my family, but we have been lucky enough to not have serious problems.)

I'm sure I'll have this done by this weekend, and then Lori can use it as often as she needs.