Southwest US Oddball Baby Blankets

#1

Hello friendly charity knitters and crocheters!

We work together to make Oddball Baby Blankets for charity. Our blankets will be made according to the requests of our local hospital(s), so keep watching this thread to see our guidelines.

Secksiebrat will be the leader for the Southwest Region Oddball Baby Blankets.

The Southwest Region includes: [B]Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas[/B].

If you would like to volunteer to help make our blankets, please send Secksiebrat a private message, and she’ll help you get started!

Our project will begin in August, so let’s start our plans!

#2

Hiya! I just wanted to say I’m here and I’m in :slight_smile:

Can’t wait for August to start!

~danielle~

#3

I love this region idea! I think it will be a lot more manageable. Count me in here!

#4

count me in I also pm’d ya jjminarcik

#5

Hey y’all :waving: I received PM’s from the 3 of you, so I have you on my list!

I am really excited about starting these up again and I look forward to working with all of you! :woot:

I will be out of town for good part of the next few weeks, so I may not be posting very often. But I assure everything will be organized and ready to go. I will keep you all in the loop so we can plan accordingly.

#6

Oh, yea! Count me in as well. I’ll pm you.

#7

Go Southwest! :thumbsup:

#8

hi!!

has anyone giving any thought as to what charity we are going to donate the blankets to? or do we want to find different hospitals in each state to donate to the children/Neonatal Intensive care units.

Just wondering.

#9

I think we can donate to whichever hospitals we like! HAIN (heavenly angels in need) has a running spreadsheet that gives hospitals from every state that wants/needs blankets/other items. If we don’t have any in mind to use currently, we might look at those and pick a couple to donate to.

Just my thoughts :slight_smile: I’m open, just thought it might be nice to donate to a hospital that’s in our “southwest” area!

~danielle~

PS. I am part of HAIN and I can get a couple of the spreadsheet and the donation instructions if we are interested in doing that :slight_smile:

#10

I think we might need to start “dragging in” more knitters! LOL. Maybe others just haven’t posted yet, but we need more of us! We must just be all lost in the HEAT!!

~danielle~

#11

I’m all knitting on the blankets and i do borders too :slight_smile: aren’t I talented.

Secksiebrat giving the blankets to HAIN sound like a great idea. I was going to call the 2 hospitals here in town and see if they take blankets or any other items.

does HAIN do just blankets? or can it be other items?

#12

Hey y’all! I’m finally back in town after one of my many upcoming trips! It sure is nice to be HOME!

I love the idea of giving the blankets to HAIN - wonderful idea! :cheering:
Danielle - Can you send me the info that you have?

I agree that we need more knitters - otherwise we may not be able to make as many blankets as I would like. :sad: I am trying to recruit one of my knitting friends here in my area. She is out of town and will probably join us later. We do have one other knitter that is a very close friend of mine from college. She lives in Atlanta, so she’s out of our region, but wanted to be in my group. I figured we could use the extra knitting hands! :teehee:

Okay, off to organize this project more so. Thank you so much for volunteering - I’m so excited!! :woot:

#13

I live in the Dallas/Ft.Worth area. I know that both the Dallas Children’s Hospital and the Scottish Rite Hospital both take donated items.

I’ll ask the ladies in my lys knit group if they would be interested in helping us with our blankets.

I’ll let y’all know.

#14

I’ll look over the spreadsheet and see what hospitals in the
[B]Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas are collecting blankets. [/B]

Some hospitals take other items as well. They usually specify what they are looking/needing for. I’ll get that info as soon as the website is back up :slight_smile: They are moving to a new host!

We can pick a couple to donate to and maybe others will want to donate other items (usually they are hats or small gloves that they also want/need).

~danielle~

#15

Go Southwest! I’m sure you’ll get more knitters signed up when the blankets get started. There’s something about seeing those photos of blankets in progress that lights a fire in the soul of knitters. cloud9

#16

So how many of us are there now? HAIN sounds good, but I also like the idea of giving to my local hospitals too – maybe we can spread the wealth based on where our knitters are…

Another thought would be to post an invite to the SW threads in the “Knitters Near You” Forum – might get a few bites…

I’m excited about this and honestly a little relieved…the postage always made me feel a little guilty – that when it was all added up the cost of these various blankets was quite high per blanket and maybe that money would be better spent elsewhere directly helping a charity, despite the fact I like making them…

Adri

#17

i try to mail the blankets the cheapest way possible. I put them in envelopes which save a good bit on postage.

#18

Hey fellow knitters/crocheters! :waving:

We now have a blog for our region! Check it out here. I will be posting on the blog often as things develop. It is easy to communicate there with comments, etc. I can add you all on as authors to the blog. If you want to be added, please pm me your email address. :woot:

Here are the knitters that have signed up with me so far:

jjminarcik (me)
Secksiebrat
Robinknits
Knittinmitchie
cdjack
lucky_alf2
stirlinggirl (Ravelry)

If your name is not on this list and you would like to join our group, please PM me.

Our next job - let’s start a blanket! I can start it and have it in the mail to the first knitter by August 1. Any suggestions to a theme/color scheme?

Also, since our region is large in size and small in knitters, we may be a little slower in completing as many blankets. We could always have 2 blankets going at once and reverse the order that they go in.

Someone mentioned the idea of donating blankets in each of our own areas. I like that idea - we can take turns donating in our areas.

Please, please let me know ideas. I’m super easy to work with and definitely could not do this without all of you! :heart: :heart:

Thank you all for participating and I look forward to working with you!

Oh, and do any of you know how to create buttons for our signatures? :shrug:

#19

Hi! Thanks for all the hard work JJ! I like the idea of having 2 blankets going at once, maybe even consider having co-located people knit in order – it might be fun to hand off personally even – put a face to a name/id :slight_smile:

I’ve never done a button but am fairly computer savvy and think I could do it. I’ll take a stab at it this weekend.

What size blankets are we going to do? Or are we going to vary the size depending on what we feel like?

As for colors – if we have 2 going – maybe have one be traditional baby colors (boy/girl/gender neutral) and the other be related to an upcoming holiday (Halloween, Fall, Christmas, Hanukkah, Winter White, etc) or some other special theme (fruit loops, greens, seed stitch, etc). Maybe the one who starts the blanket can decide the theme and then have us all take turns starting. Just some ideas.

Lastly, I finished and edged a premie blanket in May and when I was done I found that I was compelled to start a new blanket on the empty needles – they just kept talking to me, saying how sad and empty they were…anyways, maybe think about having the last person on the list start the next blanket while they have the needles with them.

Oh, speaking of needles, I recently got KP Options so I have some Boyce’s I’d be happy to donate to the cause if they are the right size…

Smiles – Adri

#20

You’re in my neck of the woods…how and where did you find a LYS with a knitting group? What’s the name of the store? I’d like to see if it’s close to me. I’m in Saginaw