Virginia Tech Day Of Remembrance

I'll let these links speak for themselves. Please visit www.remembrance.vt.edu for more.


Today's University Commemoration webcast

Tonight's Candlelight Vigil webcast


And if you haven't seen it...

Video Tribute: In Memory of All Those We Have Loved and Lost

Correction?

I just saw someone else's estimate that it might take more than 500 hours to complete a blanket, not including the finishing. Since I'm a relatively new knitter/crocheter and I haven't ventured very far past the basic patterns, it is quite possible that my calculations are way too low...

I will quite happily admit that my estimates are wrong.

Still a whole lot of Hokie Healing going on!

Fun with Hokie Math

I just checked the Mosaic Yarn Shop blog. The current “Hokie Healing” square count is 6,589. According to Gina Bonomo, blankets are going to continue to be made until all of the squares are gone.

Let’s do some math!

It takes 64 squares to make one blanket. 6,589 squares divided by 64 equals 102.95. We’ll round that up to 103.

The average knitter could probably crank out one simple square in two hours. (Notice I said ‘average’ – not those expertly speedy fingers all tweaked out on caffeine.) The average knitter could probably make a complex square in about four hours. Let’s say, for the sake of our fuzzy math lesson, that half of the squares are simple, half are complex. So… on average, it takes an average knitter 3 hours to make an average square.

6,589 squares multiplied by 3 hours each equals 19,767 hours.

Impressive as that is, we’re not done yet.

On Saturday, an average team of 8 stitchers took an average of 2.5 hours to assemble 64 squares into a blanket (this is based purely on my own anecdotal evidence). That’s 20 hours of womanpower. Then it takes an additional 6-ish hours, according to my Mom, to crochet the two rows around the perimeter of the blanket to finish it off. So we have another 26 hours to add to each blanket. Remember, we're talking average volunteer knitter. The pros are statistical outliers.

26 hours multiplied by 103 blankets equals 2,678 hours.

2,678 hours plus 19,767 equals 22,445 hours!

To put that in perspective…

If one woman were to attempt this feat by herself, working 24 hours a day, it would take 935.2 days to finish the task. That’s 2.6 years, or 31 months, of NON-STOP STITCHING!

If that one woman were a little saner and were to approach the task like a full-time job, 40 hours a week – it would take 561 weeks (no vacations), or almost ELEVEN YEARS!

Conclusion?

Holy smokes, there’s a whole lot of Hokie Healing going on!

The Chair-y Tree

Could someone please explain to me why in the heck someone would strap a wooden chair to a big oak tree? Am I missing something? Is this a research project? A social experiment? A student prank? I don't understand!


It's been up there for at least a month. You'd think that someone would have removed it by now if it weren't supposed to be there. So... does that mean that it IS supposed to be there? The mystery is driving me mad! Mad, I tell you! MAD!!!

Hokie Healing Project

Mosiac Yarn Shop organized the Hokie Healing Project to create blankets for the families of the victims of the Virginia Tech shootings. They asked volunteers to knit or crochet 8x8 squares that would be sewn together (64 squares in each blanket). Today was the big sewing party at the Inn at Virginia Tech. Mom and I went to help sew together the squares into blankets. We had a lot of fun! We even left with 64 squares EACH to take home and piece together since there were so many blankets left to make (actually, Mom left with 128 because she planned to do one with her friends tomorrow afternoon). My mission is to complete this one, take it back to Mosaic, pick out 64 more squares, put 'em together, take it back, pick out 64 more squares... and keep going until there are no squares left. Don't know how many I will manage to do, but that's the plan.

Not surprisingly, the media showed up - all three local news stations, plus journalists from the Roanoke Times and the Richmond Times-Dispatch. WSET-13 (our local ABC affiliate) did a fantastic story - watch and see how many times you can spot me or my Mom...

Watch the WSET-13 video and play "Spot the Susan" here.
[Hint: I'm the woman wearing the maroon shirt...]

Additional news coverage:
WDBJ-7
WSLS-10
The Roanoke Times
The Richmond Times-Dispatch, includes slideshow

Be sure to check out Mosaic's blog for more details, including awesome photos!