Friday, September 18, 2009

Kids Charity Knitting Group

Attention Williston, VT parents of knitting kids!

Suzie and I are working with the Dorothy Alling Memorial Library in Williston to set up our after school charity knitting program for this year. We are finalizing all of the details, but we're aiming for a mid-October start date on Tuesday afternoons after school.

This is a CHARITY knitting group, and we will be knitting preemie hats for the NICU at Fletcher Allen Heath Care in Burlington. It's a great project because November is Preemie Awareness Month!

This project means a lot to me because Helen and Sophie were born 4 weeks early and spent the first several weeks of their lives being well cared for in the NICU at FAHC. I've started a few hats already, so we have fun examples for the kids.
We'll start out with a very basic preemie hat, and then continue to knit more hats, allowing the kids to experimant with different colors and different stitch patterns. They'll learn how to work on double pointed needles, how to finish the hats properly and how to figure out proper decrease techniques with different stitch counts. They'll also have fun knitting in a group and doing "show and tell" each week with their hats. We'll set goals at our first meeting, adjust them along the way, and in the end, take a field trip to deliver the hats to the NICU. (Sorry - NICU babies are too fragile to visit with, but the kids will experience what it feels like to give such a wonderful gift first hand!)

We have wonderful yarns donated by Berroco and Plymouth and needles donated by Accessories Unlimited for this program. The yarn colors are super fun, and all I can say is there are going to be some stylish preemies out there this winter!

Watch the Williston Observer and the Williston School Bell for details about this program. And we'll post it here as soon as we get the dates!

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