Student Crochet and a New School Year: 2022

I’ve gone back to school! I’m attempting to get a Master’s in Library Science and it’s been a rough few weeks. Grad school started at about the same time the new school year started at work, and it’s been crazy busy. I’m three weeks in at work and I’m finally able to start my crochet projects with the kids.

One little girl, who is in 2nd grade now, has been asking if I could sell her one of the crochet items I had in the prize box, or if I could custom make something she could buy. She was asking me this in first grade. I told her she could just earn stars (an incentive program we have) and get it for free. Well, here we are in a brand new year and she started asking me again. She’s pretty stubborn about wanting to buy something from me so I told her that I would give her a big discount and she could go ahead and buy one of my dolls.

One day she surprised me when she handed me some money and said she wanted a doll. I asked her mom if this was ok, and she was supportive of the idea. Unfortunately the doll she wanted was already taken by another child who earned enough stars to get it. She picked something else, but I felt bad the doll she wanted was gone, so I told her I would try to recreate the doll. I reminded her it wouldn’t be exactly the same because I make them uniquely every time, but that it would be close. She got very excited and said yes.

Unfortunately for me (not really), now that I was custom making her a doll, she had a lot of opinions on how she wanted it. Wait a minute, didn’t she just spend a lot of time telling me how much she loved the other one and wanted it to be the same? Now she had all kinds of ideas on how this one should be? I should have known the project would grow. Oh, and did I mention that now I have to deal with a very excited little girl asking me every minute if I’m done with her doll or when will I be done with her doll? Gentle reminders that it takes time to make tend to fall on deaf ears with a 2nd grader. 😂 I knew the job was dangerous when I took it.

I had her draw me a picture because she was throwing a lot of directions at me at once, but the picture was so small that I had her talk me through it.

Those notes are mine even though they look like, well, a second grader wrote them. But I got the gist of what she wanted. Now she wanted the doll to have buns and winky eyes and shoes and all these bows. It was all very cute.

She helped me design the face. It’s looking pretty cute.

They get very invested in a toy when they help design it. The other little girl who picked the other doll had helped me pick colors and I think that’s why she wanted it so badly when she made it to the prize box. This is why I love what I do.

I also have another student in 4th grade who I taught to crochet in previous years. In this new year, she finally mastered single crochet and created a square to show me she had it down. I showed HER what that square could become and she was so excited to make her very own purse.

Now she’s working on a bigger one. It’s wonderful to see when the students progress to making their own things. They are so proud of themselves and I get so happy another person loves crochet.

Not a bad start to the school year!

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