IWAV Events in March

"Melting Snow" by Neneonline at flickr.comHi ladies,
Could a spring thaw be just around the corner? I am hopeful that it is! In any case we'll have a few things going on in March to keep us busy! First though, Thursday night is "Stich and More Stich" at Susan Haftel's house. We meet from 7 to 9 PM. Bring any kind of tidy needlecraft, or just come to chat at the Haftel residence. This is an ongoing activity, every other Thursday night.


March 5, 10 AM, SAS Radisson: Coffee Morning. Join us for tea/coffee/sweets and as always, bring a friend and newcomer!


IWAV member Lis Berthelsen has kindly invited us to her home the evening of March 10. We had so much fun experimenting with the lovely makeup from the Danish stand (and Lis has tons) that we thought it would be fun to do it again and have a "girls night in" at Lis's house. Thanks so much for the offer, Lis! I think that Breda will also be on hand to give us facials as well. So if you can make it Wednesday March 10 at 6:30 PM please RSVP to me by March 9.


I hope you have your calendar marked for March 20, which is our second annual breast cancer fundraiser at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. We have now heard from the hospitals and it looks like biopsy needles are indeed needed again, so proceeds from the event (which will include dinner, drinks, live music through the decades, the debut of Ruta Rimsiliene's newest evening shoe collection, and lots and lots of FUN) will go to purchase biopsy needles for Lithuanian breast cancer patients. We are so very pleased that longtime and very involved IWAV member Siobhan Denham has agreed to be the patron of our event--we are especially glad since the Denhams will be leaving us soon and this is our last big IWAV function to say goodbye to Siobhan. It promises to be a great evening, so don't miss it! I'm attaching the invitation so please, pass it along to your friends and acquaintances!


Then, after the excitement of the fundraiser, come to In Vino (on Ausros Vartu, on your way to Gates of Dawn) March 24 at 7:30 PM. For a good year now, we've heard that you want an evening book club that meets somewhere to have just a glass of wine or a tea and a good chat. This is our chance to start one, so bring ideas and your favorite books (maybe even some you wouldn't mind exchanging with others) and we'll get it started! Email me if you have questions or plan to come.


That's all for now...see you soon,
Erin

Stitch and “More Stitch”

Dear Ladies,

Please see below an invitation from Susan to an evening of Stitch and "More Stitch":

You are invited to join us for Stitch and “More stitch” on Thursday evening, February 25, 2010, from 7:00 until 9:00 PM at Dailidziu 22A.

Any tidy, portable handwork is welcome. So far we have had the skills of embroidery, felting, quilting, and knitting represented. If you don’t want to stitch, you can still come to enjoy the group.

Please let me know if you can attend.

Susan Haftel
Susan_haftel (at) hotmail (.) com

IWAV Playgroups: Fun For Moms and Kids

We have not yet had a post about a big and important part to IWAV activities – playgroups. Today I hosted my first playgroup, so I thought it will be a good opportunity to post a couple photos and say a couple words about this wonderful activity that brings together Moms and kids! Whoever had the idea to set up two meetings a week for Moms to meet up is a genius :-) I personally think it is wonderful! Not only kids get to socialize and play, Moms get to get away from the household routines and stresses, chat and share experience and knowledge. And it’s also a good reason to get off a diet and enjoy some nice cake with a coffee!


It can at times get pretty loud and chaotic when there are lots of little playgroup participants, but I just love watching kids play, seeing how they communicate, how their personalities come out, seeing how they learn new things...

So hey all English speaking Moms out there, IWAV playgroup is a great opportunity for you to meet and mingle with other Moms and find playmates for your kids. If you are not IWAV members yet, contact us now :-)

MMS: Chocolate Indulgence

If the word “chocolate” sounds divine to your ears and you have not attended tonight’s MMS at AJ Šokoladas, you should not look at the photos below – they will make you jealous :-) Six fully grown chocolatoholics and a tiny baby one were getting high on the "feel good" hormone at a recently opened café at Pilies 8! We were served melted dark and milk chocolate alongside various dippables like fresh fruit, cheese cake, marzipan, Florentines etc. It was incredibly delicious and we had a lot of fun indulging and enjoying each other’s company







Unfortunately, I had to go early but could not leave empty handed so I got a selection of yummy AJ chocolates to take home with me. As Erin mentioned announcing the event, New Year resolutions just went out of the window! Oh well… there is always a new-life-starting-Monday option :-)
Galina

Quilting Classes: Shoo-Fly Medallion Quilt

featuring Rotary Cutting and Speed Piecing Basics

Chase away the winter blahs while you make a small (40” square) quilt that can decorate a table top or create a focal point on a wall. This project is sewn entirely by machine and requires access to rotary cutting equipment both in class and at home, as there will be “homeplay.”

The top takes about 3.5 yards of quilting fabric. Students may purchase fabric from the teacher’s collection on a first-come basis, and those who do not have rotary equipment may use the teacher’s in class until they have purchased their own. Batting/wadding and fabric for the back/lining are not included but can be purchased separately.

Classes are meeting four times--January 20, February 3, February 17, and March 3--from 6 pm to 9 pm at the Haftel residence (Dailidziu 22a). Although the course has begun, you can still join us. I can catch you up during the day on February 10 or add another meeting on March 17. Class size is limited to 6 adult students and there will be a fee (150 Lt if you buy your fabric from me; 125 Lt if you bring your own 100% cotton quilting fabric) for this 12 hour course.

Please email Susan Haftel (susan_haftel (at) hotmail (dot) com) for a more information and for a supply list.

Photos: Delivering Food To The Villagers Of Rudiskes

Please, see Barbara's update about food drive and delivering food to Rudiskes here .

Food Drive Update

Photo from Flickr.com by D3 San Francisco
Dear Ladies,

Did you know that 5 am on Monday morning the temperature was minus 35. No wonder our cars would not start!

For our monthly social evening we went to Daiva Archipovaite's lingerie shop as Erin has already mentioned. I would like to say that the items I bought there are wonderful and I will certainly be going back for more. Other ladies that bought things at the same time are also extremely pleased. Well worth a visit Ladies.

After the Prisma food drive I was going to write and thank everyone including the embassies that also took part, for all the good work and time and effort that was put into the event. Then I thought I would wait and write to you after I had delivered the food to the homes in the Rudiskes area where I live so that I could tell you about that at the same time.

None of you will be able to imagine the conditions that these families live in, and I mean that with the greatest respect to all of you.

I came back so depressed and almost in tears.

My neighbour Wim helped. We loaded the food into the van and set off. He told me that it was not a good idea to divide the food into bags as the majority of the men in the homes were alcoholics and would sell the excess food to get some vodka. We went to each home and assessed the situation, how many children etc and then gave them food. Wim will go back again to give them more.

They live in cardboard houses with bits of carpet tacked to the walls inside to keep out the cold - wonder how it worked in minus 35!!

They have no running water, no room for a fire. One house had three families living in separate rooms. When we asked if anyone else was in another room they said no. As we drove away, an old man with a walking stick was hobbling towards us carrying a small container of water he had collected from somewhere. He told us that he lived in another room in the same house on his own.. His face as he clutched a bag of food to his chest will stay with me for ever.

In another house the four small children were so beautiful and clean but there was nothing else in there. One tiny 5/6 year old had learned a few words of english and we coaxed ' how are you' out of him.

Another house we went to had a HUGE pool of frozen blood outside the house. The woman's husband was alcoholic and she was crying so much that she found it difficult to tell us that he had been fighting, hence the blood. Who he had been fighting with or where he was at that time, we couldn't find out.

These were just a few of the homes I went to.

This is the REAL Lithuania and this is Europe.

Ladies, this food was a life-saver and I do not use that term lightly. Thank you so much again for everything that was done by everybody. You have certainly improved the lives of some families even though it is only for a short time.

If anyone would like to visit some of these homes then let me know.

Coffee morning on Friday Ladies.

Come along and catch up with all the ongoing events.

Barbara

(posted from an email)

A Long Walk In The Snow

Look at this photo! Doesn’t it look terribly cold?! Brrrrrrr! And it looks so different from what we see in the streets of Vilnius… so white and snowy. Yesterday, Barbara with some ladies from IWAV and hash members had a 1 1/2 hour walk in the snow at her house.

In the photo from left to right: Terry Amos, Liliana, Mike, Eva Amos and their son Stuart, Barbara, Francoise and Mauricette. Three more people enjoyed this adventure but are not in the pic as they joined in later because they got lost trying to find the house.

Looks like fun!

Christmas Parties Update

Here we are!  The last weekend before Christmas!

We have two charity projects going on during Christmas week: the Christmas party at the Sisters of Mother Teresa Shelter and some giving goodness at a Gerontology Rehabilitation Center on Kalvariju, in the Verkiu forest (Stations of the Cross).

For the party at the shelter, I would like to thank Judith for her generosity!  Thanks to her the children attending the party will each receive a snowman baggy with a candy cane, a Christmas tattoo, a felt ornament or a little Chrismtas critter -- plus some other homebaked goodies.  I also have a humongous teddy bear to give away to the lucky winner of a drawing.

Also, thanks to our members we gathered more than enough gifts for the female residents of the shelter; we still need a few for the male occupants.

On Monday we'll be preparing food crates for the families.  On Tuesday morning we'll be preparing goodies and decorations for the party at 2 pm.

Most of you probably don't know about the event at the gerontology center.  When Barbara and I decided that we wanted to target older folks for our gift-giving at the MMS, I had contacted a home near my house to find out how many residents they had: 140!  We ended up asking for a more manageable number of gifts for the Mother Teresa shelter.  But I had already got the gerontology center excited! 

So I've managed to put together 65 gifts so far, which will be used to embellish common areas (dining room, living rooms, etc.).  With a little groveling on my part, the Italian Embassy generously donated five of the beautiful blankets they were selling at the Christmas Bazaar, plus four pandoro (my favorite:  a kind of panettone without the dried fruit and with powdered sugar to sprinkle on top) and other yummy sweets.

In the midst of my scouring Vilnius for goodies, Barbara called up and asked if I wouldn't mind having some money for the party at the shelter -- a donation of some extra proceeds from the Christmas Bazaar!  We came to a decision to split the donation between the shelter and the gerontology center.  So now both recipients have money to buy extra Christmas trees, decorations and food for their holiday celebrations!

I hope to see some of you at the shelter on Monday or Tuesday!
Sydney
IWAV Charity Coordinator

IWAV December Social - Christmas Cocktails and Desserts

Here are some photos and a video from the Christmas MMS party at the Radisson Hotel last night. I can not give you a complete account of the evening as I could only attend for a few minutes. But even in this short time I really enjoyed the cozy atmosphere of the Radisson bar and the friendly and attentive service. As you can see from the video there was a good turn out and everyone was having a very nice time!
:-) Galina