One of my passions goes charitable

Granny Square Afghan

One of my passions is crocheting. I learned when I was in high school. I would sit at home watching TV and my mom would sit in her rocker and crochet night after night. She mostly made granny square afghans. Sometimes she'd make something else. She would use the afghans as gifts for friends and family. A lot of her afghans were gifts to friends getting married. The friends that were getting married and received an afghan were so thankful. Mom loved the fact that they loved her afghan but too often she would hear "It's so pretty, I'm going to put it in the closet and keep it safe." Mom hated this, she wanted them to use them, drape the afghan on the back of the couch as decoration or just to have handy if someone gets cold. She ready loved it when she would go over to someone's house and there was the afghan she gave them out and ready for someone to use.

Made from a pattern

As I said mom taught me how to crochet when I was in high school that means I've been crocheting for about 47 years. I did the same thing, I made afghans for friends that were getting married and that was their wedding present. I also wanted to see them used so I would tell them please don't put it in a bag or box and stick it in the closet but leave it out and let it be used. They are strong and can take a lot of abuse. I have made probably 12 to 20 afghans for friends. I also taught myself how to read a pattern so I could make afghans that were different, not just granny squares. and I did make a lot of different afghans, some I gave away  as gifts and some I sold. 

As the years went along and I got older and retired I had more time to crochet. In fact I spend a lot of time sitting in front of  our TV crocheting. All of my yarn is donated from friends or from other sources. Well with so much yarn I had to figure out what to do with it all. One day I was in Michael's and they had a project sheet for making squares so they could make blankets for the homeless. They wanted the squares to be a certain size and that's all they wanted. They said bring your squares to Michael's and they would sew them together and get them to a shelter for the homeless. So I started making squares, actually they are rectangles about 7" x 9", well after awhile I stopped taking them to Michael's and kept them and made the blankets myself. When finished I would give them to one of our neighbors here at our apartment and he took them to the church next door and they would take them to the homeless that were living down by the river. I gave the church about 12 or 15 blankets.

One night I was watching "The Celebrity Apprentice". Meat Loaf, the singer, was one of the contestants and  his charity was Painted Turtle Children's Camp. We had never heard of them and so we Googled them and we found that they are a camp that takes children with all life threating diseases and one of them is Muscular Distrophy. I have worked with and donated to MD since the early 70's and they are dear to my heart. So when I heard that MD kids could go to "The Painted Turtle" camp I wanted to see if I could help. And I found that Painted Turtle gives each camper a quilt or an afghan when they come to camp and they get to keep them. So I contacted Painted Turtle to see what size the afghan had to be. When I had the size in hand I started making afghans for " The Painted Turtle " So far I've sent 5 afghans and I am making more.

Another charity has received an Afghan from me and I have more for them now and will send them soon. It is FFRC (Friends of Feline Rescue Center). The center has a 24/7 web-cam and a pretty large following  Last year, 2011, they had their first Catathon. It is their yearly fund raiser for the center, in fact last year they had some construction done on good faith that it would be paid for. So the Catathon was started and just to let you know they raised the money they needed. This year they are raising money for their new storage room that's being built. So I have 3 afghans I'm sending them and a poncho. I hope the afghans can help them raise some money by auctioning them off.

As long as I have yarn and the use of my hands I will continue making blankets for children at camp or for the homeless. If anyone reading this has any extra yarn that they would like to donate to me to make more blankets please leave a comment and I can get back to you with an address to send it to.


Later I'll post about some of my other passions. I love to shoot black powder guns and I collect pins. Just a couple of things you'll be hearing about from the one born in '49.