Raising Maine

A friend sent out an email back in August looking for assistance in knitting hats for Christmas gifts for a local food pantry. The families that rely on the food pantry are often in need of winter gear and the volunteers who work there coordinate willing knitters to help make hats, mittens and scarves to give out during the holiday season. Since my girls enjoy making hats with their Knifty Knitter looms (Fino and the cat can often be seen wearing their special hats around our house), they agreed to make a few hats for the food pantry.

During the past two months of making hats, L. learned a new way to use her loom to make cute flower adornments. The hats they have been making are an eclectic mix of sizes and yarn types but there is definitely a leaning toward more girl-oriented hats with our donation because they liked the flowers so much (G. hasn't bothered to learn to make them though because her sister is "flower crazy" and has made so many of them).

It's an eclectic mix of hat sizes, styles and colors, made by the girls. I did crochet a couple as well but the girls did the bulk of the work using their Knifty Knitter. If you're unfamiliar with this fun little crafting tool, L. offers a short demonstration of it here.
L.'s flowers really do add a special touch to the hats.
L. uses her smallest Knifty Knitter loom to make her flowers.
I asked L. to do a demonstration of how she makes the flowers but after trying to take a couple of pictures of her doing this, we switched to video. As you'll see, it really is easy to make these.



The girls will be putting their hat-making on hiatus starting next week because they are moving on to another knitting project - making squares for an afghan. Their 4-H club is undertaking a project to make a couple of afghans for a local family shelter. The club has done this in the past (twice actually here and here) and all the kids involved had a lot of fun with this service project so they requested the club do it again. This year their goal is to make two full-size afghans so we have a lot of work ahead of us to coordinate the task of making the necessary squares (which we have determined will take a total of 200).

So for the next couple of months our time hanging around the house will be all about making squares for these afghans. Then in February, once all the volunteers making the squares have turned them over to us, the girls will be organizing the project for the club meeting to sew everything together. The actual sewing together of the squares is a super fun project for all ages if you do some planning. I've learned a few lessons organizing this project in the past and have some suggestions if you're interested in doing a group project like this with your own kids. (You can also check out the Warm Up America! program's website for more expert tips on getting a project like this started, including lesson plans to teach kids to knit.)

After seeing Erika's fab crochet hats I roped her in to crocheting a few squares for the afghans but we're still in need of help. If there are any knit/crochet types out there that would like to make squares, let me know and I'll send you additional details about the project.