Extending the Giving Circle.

These are a few of my favorite things:

live music of all styles
handmade gifts
beautiful and functional tools

These are a few of my goals as a parent:

provide my children with my favorite things
teach my children to provide others with these things

In other words, I want my children to cherish and to give handmade items as gifts.  I also want them to cherish and to give live music as a gift. Live music and handmade gifts require beautiful, functional tools.  And skill developed over time. And they require generosity.

My kids are all studying music, and they are all learning fiber arts. These are gifts my husband and I give to them. They have made lots of items to give away to friends and family. And my husband and I always encourage the kids to think of the music they play in public as a gift for the audience.

So, this post is about extending the giving circle a bit wider.  This year my  daughter was accepted into the Vermont Youth Philharmonia, a program of the Vermont Youth Orchestra Association, or VYOA.  The organization offers her a chance to push herself technically and musically, at a time when she can really benefit from that.  It's a wonderful program, and I'm so grateful that she can be a part of it.

In order to provide access to as many Vermont youth as possible, the VYOA provides a great deal of scholarship assistance to its members. And I've decided to do some independent fund-raising to help them provide that gift to children, my child included.  My feeling is that they give this gift to the children, and the children then give the gift of music to their families and communities. It's a rich circle.

So, I will be selecting items from my personal collection of tools, fibers, and yarns to give away over the next few months.  My  goal is to raise $2,100 for the organization before 2013.

Want to see a picture of my daughter? Check out the VYOA Facebook page. In the "wall" photos, she's in the first two photos, on the far right in both. (Of course she is also featured on this blog modeling many of my creations.)

So, look for giveaways here over the next few months. I'll try to offer something for everyone, from tools to fiber to yarn to handmade items, including some beauties made by my daughter herself.

These are a couple of things Sophia and I have made. On top is a little tree tapestry made on a peg loom from Harrisville Designs. It was my first ever tapestry, ad I still love it!

Second is a shawl knit by Sophia from a pattern I wrote for some yarn I spun. This was a wonderful collaboration.