Save The Bag!

Dear friends of Bags4Darfur;

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I am entirely unsure what ransom amount is required to release me and put me in my rightful place in front of my beloved Bernina. The universe is a difficult captor to negotiate with. As it has conspired against me in the forms of soccer, gardening, work, yard sales, and sudden, torrential downpours that leak into my basement... I cast sidelong, wistful gazes at the stacks of wonderment that I call fabric. And I hope.

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Meanwhile, faithful supporters cajole me with offerings of unfinished quilts, vintage thrift shop cast-offs, and church rummage sale plunder. Mop in hand, I whine my way past the delicacies and back down to my wrongful place in the dank, be-puddled cellar.

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(insert dramatic sigh here)

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Who will save me? What can be done to redeem this thwarted lover of fibers and place her, scissors in hand, at the fount of the ancient poly/cotton blend?

Meanwhile, it appears that I may have dropped off the face of the earth, and relegated my love for all things sewn to the past. Not so. I mourn it deeply, and wait impatiently. There is NO immediate plan to cease bag making. I still have roughly a zillion plans for bag creations. I have promises to keep. I have addictions to fuel. I have supplies in store to take me roughly into my 70's.

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Marketing and time remain my biggest challenges. How do I continue to put out a good product, support women in the Sudan, and keep interest alive? Meanwhile spinning a small mountain of other plates? How do I generate new interest so that funds raised somewhat matches my time invested?

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Thanks to response to my "help" bulletin, I am considering a facebook option, that might be more user friendly. Instead of readers having to check back daily to see if there is any bag action, a notice would be posted to any fan's wall (or something like that. I may have all the terminology wrong here).

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Right now I am working on a short list of "favours". People who appealed to my soft side and made me do what I pretend not to do- customs.

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So, I'm not sure whether to apologize or just wave and smile. I found last spring/summer to be tremendously challenging as well, in terms of keeping up the bag production. Last year I chose to take a break for a number of months, but I felt as though I had lost a lot of people that way.

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This project is dear to my heart. It pulls together so much of what I believe in- God of love, using old and discarded and making it wonderful, and most of all- supporting our sisters/mothers/daughters/fellow human beings in Sudan who have pretty much no choices in their lives. And plenty of trauma. (Just reading "A Thousand Sisters" by Lisa Shannon**)

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I have no desire to stop.

Just waiting on that ransom, is all.

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**I had a great life—a successful business, a fiancé, a home, and security. But in the wake of my Dad’s death, and soon-to-be thirty years old, I found myself depressed, camped out in my living room watching Oprah. It was there that I learned about Congo, widely called the worst place on earth to be a woman. Awakened to the atrocities –millions dead, women being raped and tortured, children starving and dying in shocking numbers –I had to do something.