Lent

Blogging about Lent seems to be all the rage. I'm not going to write about what I'll be giving up this year, though. (I thought about giving up blogging for 40 days - anyone think I should?)

Instead, I'm going to write about how Lent was observed back in the late sixties, at the Anglican convent school where I attended between the ages of 7 and 11. The concept of giving things up was not overly stressed, but instead an attitude of increased service and goodwill towards others was promoted with the main event being a daily lunchtime sale of homemade items. I guess the idea was that we were "giving up" our pocket money to buy things that our friends had made while "giving up" their free time. Works for me!

My usual offering was to make up little bags of peppermint creams, which were always popular. For readers with young children, these are a great way to get them into following recipes. Only three ingredients, no baking needed, and they get to learn how to separate the yolks from the white!

However, one year, my Brownie Diary (yes, I was a Brownie) included a knitting pattern for small, basic teddy bears. (For readers with young children, these are a great way to get them into following knitting patt... yada, yada, yada) The first day, I'd only had time to knit a single teddy bear, and I felt rather foolish as I stood by my little table waiting for someone to want to buy it. "What is, this? A raffle? Do we have to guess it's name or something?" However, as I got faster and my mother joined in, I was able to produce several a night (I'm guessing homework was suspended!) and they became quite a popular item.

Not to an extent to turn me into a popular kid, of course. :-P