service projects

This year I decided to do some kind of service project each month.  I have started by doing things that will use up some of my extra yarn and material that I have accumulated over the years.  For January I did baby hats to be donated to the hospital for the new borns.  It has been the tradition for the hospitals in this area to send each newborn home in a home made knitted hat.  I made 50 baby hats. Twelve of the hats had pompoms on them, twelve had tassels, and the rest were just the plain old beanie style hat.  It took so much time to do the ones with the pompoms and tassels so I did less of them.  I tried to make half of them in more girlish colors and the other half in boyish colors.

These are the pompom and tassel hats.

Here are the beanies.

Since February is the heart month, I decided to use up some of that left over material and make heart pillows to also be donated to the heart unit at the hospital.  Each patient that has open heart surgery is given a home made heart-shaped pillow to hold over their incisions.  According to the two people I know who have had the surgery say that it was so wonderful to have to relieve the pain from the surgery.  I used the pillow that one of my best friend's used for her heart surgery as a pattern.

I made 24 of these and delivered them on Valentine's Day.

For March and April I have made six lap top sized afghans.  I just finished the sixth one and my hands are really starting to hurt.  I guess the arthritis is really setting in and my knitting days may be coming to a sudden halt.  I hope not.  I know it isn't carpel tunnel this time because there is no numbness, but I simply have no grip.  It hurts to try to even pinch my fingers tight enough to thread a needle to tie in the loose ends.  I will take a break from knitting for a time and do some sewing machine work.  Maybe I will be able to get back to knitting if I give my hands a break.  I have done a lot of knitting since the beginning of the year.

This is the final one that almost did me in.  It took twice as
long to do as did any of the others. The pattern wasn't hard,
just completing it was hard.

This striped pattern was so simple  All garter stitch so went
pretty fast.  Hate the tie-ins at the end, however, because of
the many changes of colors.

Love this chevron pattern.  Thought it would
be hard to do, but was actually very easy.

This was the first one I did.  It is called a sampler because it
has four different patterns in the blocks. The white are seed
stitch, the blue are diagonal rib, the green are basket weave,
and the maroon are ridge.  I crocheted the blocks together
and also crocheted the border.  Labor intensive.

This was a fun one.  Each block is done in a
different color.  I did it in long strips so I could
get the borders knitted right in. I did have to
sew the four strips together and pick up and
knit the bottom border.