After a couple month’s hiatus to work on projects for my new apartment, I’m finally getting back to my amigurumi. It always seems like if I take a break from something I’m struggling with, the next time I pick it up it practically makes itself. I should have it all together in another couple of days.
A few months back I was introduced to one of the coolest ways to donate to charity by the gracious Miss K of Aromaleigh fame, called DonorsChoose.org . Like many crocheters, I’m hesitant to give cash to an organization and would prefer to give made items instead but this is my one exception. The basic premise is that teachers come up with a budget for a project and post it on Donors Choose. Then anyone can donate as much as they like from $1 to the cost of the entire project. The funding goes directly to the teachers and the projects you feel are important.
I have created a Giving Page sponsoring crochet projects. Most of the projects not only teach kids how to crochet but also how to donate what they make to others. You can find more information in the give back section of the right side of this page. Please take a moment to look and see if you’d be willing to give a $1 or more to help kids learn how to crochet and how to use it to give back. I will continue to add crochet projects as the appear or you can also search for other projects you’d like to sponsor. You can find projects for a particular topic, for schools that are the most impoverished, or for schools closest to you. So if your list of charity projects this year seems impossibly long, thing of donating to one of these projects and help teach a whole new generation of giving crocheters.
I got my invite to Ravelry today and so far all I can say is “wow!” It’s as though they took a corner of the internet and condensed it down to only yarn-craft realted things. I heard about Ravelry awhile back but since I was just getting started I felt like it was way over powered for anything I’d need. Even though I now have my own baby stash of yarn and tools I still feel overwhelmed by all the site has to offer.
For the hyper-organizational, the site is a dream. It has areas to record and track progress on your existing projects, keep notes on future projects, catalog and share your yarn stash and tools, and will even link an RSS feed of your blog to your profile… and that’s just the tools for showing off your own stuff. They also have forums, user groups, and searchable directories of yarns and patterns. If all you care about in life is crocheting or knitting you could just make Ravelry your home page and never leave it. Unfortunately, this all makes for some serious information overload. I think, at least for now, the best way to make use of it is to find the parts that will be most useful and to ignore the rest.
If you want to check out Ravelry, I suggest you sign up for an invitation because it takes about four days to process. The reason for this is that the site is still in beta and they’re adding people slowly so they can control how much load the site is dealing with. The Ravelry beta is free and the site will be free too so other than waiting a few days for the invite you’re not giving up anything. I’m not sure how much I’m going to be using it right now but I definitely plan to keep an eye on it and see what other goodies the developers come up with.
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