Sep 15, 2014 3 min read

So it’s fall, already, huh? I mean, according to the calendar we still have, like, a week of summer – but it’s cold at night and hardly warm during the day, so it must be fall.

I’m torn about this.

Fall may well be the most beautiful of the seasons with its colorful landscape. It also is harvest season, so there are fresh foods and flavors around, like apple cider and pumpkin everything. But it also leads to the season of snow, ice, and cold – which shall remain nameless as long as I can avoid it – that is my least favorite of the four.

As the weather slowly turns, indoor projects will receive more attention, like the blanket that I set aside a few months ago. A brightly colored crochet project, it reminds me of the fall foliage that is already beginning to appear.

My scrapbooks will get more attention as well, beginning this Saturday, Sept. 20, at an all-day crop benefiting Grandma’s Lap. The crop, which will be held at Bethel Presbyterian Church in Prosperity, will run from 9 a.m. until 8 p.m. and costs only $25. Four feet of table space, lunch and dinner are provided to participants, and Chinese auction tickets will be available.

The eleven hours of solid time is what I’m looking forward to the most, since there is no way to get that at home. Even if my family gave me that gift, I would feel guilty looking around at all of the things I should be doing instead. At a crop, other scrapbookers are all I see.

Being able to interact with those other attendees is amazing, as well. No two styles are quite the same, and the opportunities for learning from one another abound. Sometimes, a participant has a tool that someone else has never seen and will show them how to use it. Last time, it was the Cuttlebug – this time, who knows?

This particular crop is near and dear to my heart because of the cause it benefits. Grandma’s Lap is an organization started by my daughter and I in memory of her grandmother that makes and gathers homemade lap blankets for distribution to patients with kidney disease. In eight months, Grandma’s Lap has given a blanket to more than 150 people in Washington and Greene counties.

Our spring crop raised the money needed to file our tax-exempt paperwork with the IRS, which has been submitted and is pending. The money raised at this one will help fill our other needs, such as the purchase of fleece and other materials necessary to blanket making. (Since all affiliated with Grandma’s Lap are volunteers, it allows the majority of the money we raise to go directly to blankets for patients).

It has been incredible to see what began as a senior project for high school grow into the endeavor it has become. We have received blankets from as far away as Philadelphia, Ohio, New York and Michigan through word of mouth and our Facebook page.

We still have a few seats available at the crop if anyone is interested in attending. My email is listed below, and if you let me know by Wednesday, I can likely accommodate you. Hope to see you there!

Laura Zoeller can be reached at zoeller5@verizon.net.