Nursing School Knit and Crochet

It's been almost three weeks since I finally got to do what I had imagined myself doing four years ago, back when the thought of returning to school and pursuing a degree in nursing came to mind. One of the things I saw in my mind's eye was me, sitting right here at the kitchen table just as I am now, but instead of sharing my love of all things hooks and needles with readers all over the world like I had done since 2008, I was studying, writing papers, learning about things I had never known anything about before. I saw that, and it appealed to me.

The other thing I saw was a sea of fellow nursing students, and myself included, all dressed in white, with me emerging from that sea to stand on the stage and receive my nursing pin. I had never been to a pinning ceremony before, and in fact until four years ago, I had never even heard of one! But I clearly saw this happening to me, and a few weeks ago, it did in fact actually happen! It was quite a thrill to celebrate the accomplishment achieved after so much study, hard work, and sacrifice. The study and hard work were all me, along with a healthy dose of God's good grace, when it came to the actual school work. The sacrifice, however, was not only mine but my husband's and my children's as well. Had it not been for their willingness to take on most of what I had always done and allow me the time and study necessary to succeed, it never would have happened. So it was absolutely a family effort for me to get this nursing degree and the title of Registered Nurse.

So anyway, I am done with school, except for studying for my nursing board exam which will be sometime this summer, and I have some things to share with you that were actually part of one of our last courses. We had to do a service learning project by volunteering at a charitable organization of our own choosing. One of my classmates, AH, also enjoys crocheting and so we thought it would be a great idea to choose an organization that could benefit from the two of us doing something that we loved to do already. The organization is called Warmer Winters and it is located right here in lovely Leominster, Massachusetts. They provide hand made items such as hats, scarves and mittens to needy families. You can read about their work HERE.

Keep reading to see pictures of the items we made as part of our service learning project for Warmer Winters...

These are the items AH made. She let her daughters choose some of the yarn she used for a few of the items. I bet you can guess which yarns were chosen by two fun little girls! AH's crocheting is just beautiful and all of these items will keep some people nice and warm next winter, not to mention add some awesome color to their wardrobe!

And these are the items I made. I used my Swirl Top Baby Hat pattern for most of the hats I made. They turn out different sizes by using bigger or smaller yarn and needles but the same pattern, and all you need to know how to do is knit, purl and knit two together.

A few of my scarves were made using a simple garter stitch and knitting until only a few feet of yarn was left and then binding off. That was the perfect knitting project for relaxing in the evening after a long day of lecture, studying or clinicals because it requires no thinking!

That little blanket under all the hats and scarves was made with two skeins of chunky fuzzy yarn from Warmer Winters using my newest favorite crochet stitch, the diagonal box stitch. I am going to be making a video tutorial for that over the summer so maybe it can become your new favorite crochet stitch as well!

Some of our favorite yarn companies donate yarn to Warmer Winters, which is made available for anyone to make items for them, so some of these items were made with donated yarn. I took the opportunity to dip into my own stash for some items as well.

So this is how I kept my fingers busy and fulfilled my obligation to do charitable work for class credit at the same time! It was also a good excuse to spend a couple of hours with my classmate each month working on our projects outside of the classroom setting.

Summer is not yet in full swing here as my children still have another week of school to go. We have our vacation already planned, and I am hoping to pass my board exam before we leave. Other than that, it looks like we will be having a nice relaxing summer doing fun things together on the days I am not working, and adding to my list of knit and crochet video tutorials.

How is your summer shaping up? Make sure you make some time for your hooks and needles!

Happy Stitching!

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