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Need Something to Knit While Stuck at Home? Why Not Knit for Charity

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There are so many ways we can help others in this time, from monetary donations to sewing masks and making blankets and other items.

It’s always true when it comes to charity knitting but maybe even more so now: check with the charity or place you want to donate to and see what they need and whether they are currently accepting donations.

Offices for nonprofits might be closed right now, or they might not want to accept donations if they don’t know they were made by a healthy person or if they are going to hospitals.

Warm Up America has current needs listed, for example, but their office is closed so they are not accepting donations to be shipped there (there are other projects that can be sent elsewhere, or you can hold items to ship later).

Hat Not Hate’s deadline is August 1, and they note that by the time the hats are distributed it’s unlikely the virus would still be active on the items. Shira Blumenthal is doing Facebook Lives on the Hat Not Hate Facebook page Monday through Friday for the foreseeable future.

Project Linus started a knit and crochet along March 7 that you can still join. You can get the pattern for a $15 donation (or $30 for both knit and crochet) and get access to a Facebook group about the project. The charity encourages crafters to contact their local collection site before sending or dropping of blankets to ensure they are still able to receive them.

Knitted Knockers says it is slowly and carefully continuing to distribute knit items on a limited basis at this time.

I know this barely scratches the surface of the options for knitting for charity but I wanted to throw out some options if you are home and looking for someone to knit for. If you have a favorite knitting charity and you know what their response is right now, let me know and I will add it to the post.

Comments

  1. Member of charity knitting group here, great to encourage charity knitting. Hope you won’t mind me saying, from experience, that it’s good to check the charity needs stuff (as you say). The field of charity knitting is littered with some well-meaning failures..we knitters are prolific, love to find a new idea, bootees for burnt koalas, octopuses for preemies etc that I’ve seen some websites disappear, innundated with items they can’t find outlets for. Do check before sending.

Have you read?

Easy Knit Baskets to Use All Your Stash

For the past few years I’ve taken part in a Christmas in July blog hop that encourages people to get a jump on their making for holiday gifts. 

I love to use yarn I already have for these projects in the hope that people will consider what they already have that they can use to make projects for themselves or to give as gifts. 

This year it was a couple of knit baskets made using partial balls of yarn left in my stash from other projects. 

They use the same basic pattern but the first one is made with two colors of bulky yarn, and the second used two strands of worsted weight yarn held together, which made the gauge about the same, but I cast on fewer stitches to make a smaller version. 

The bottom of the basket is square, though you can make them rectangular if you’d rather. Then I just knit up the sides in rounds until I was about to run out of yarn. This gave both baskets rather short sides — maybe more like a tray than a basket — but you can keep knitting as long as you like to make the sides of your basket as tall as you want. 

They’re worked in seed stitch, which keeps the edges from curling and adds a nice texture to the baskets.

Of course this also allows you to use even more odd balls from your stash. I’d love to make a big one someday combining lots of different yarn. I mean, I’d probably use it to store more yarn, but that’s a fine thing to do. 

As it is, these little trays are great for sitting on your desk or bedside table to hold little things that always seem to appear there. I like to use one to hold the supplies for whatever project I’m working on, things like little scissors, my tape measure, a crochet hook, etc.

And they would make good gifts on their own or as a container to hold some other goodies if you like. 

You can find the free pattern for these stash busting baskets over at Our Daily Craft.