Knitting On The Go

One of my favorite parts of knitting (and now crocheting) is that as long as I'm not in the drivers seat, I am free to knit/crochet during my travels. I can sit back, listen to the radio or my iPod, and calmly create something out of nothing.

Which is exactly what I did during my 10-hour trip home from Tennessee.

The training was incredible, to say the least. The 4 interns in my department at the Children's Defense Fund joined over 100 other young community organizers for a training on advocacy, organizing, and nonviolent action. Our training occurred concurrently with the CDF Freedom Schools, whose 1,500 servant leader interns, site coordinators and project managers provide a summer of literacy enrichment to children across the country. In addition to our training sessions, we joined the Freedom Schools to attend Harambee each morning (a half hour of songs, reading, and general pump-up for the day) as well as evening plenary sessions (generally a panel of speakers to educate the audience on a variety of topics, such as movement building, closing the achievement gap, and more). In just one short week, we developed the skills we would need to return to our hometowns and build our own Children's Action Teams in order to better fight for the rights of children. Together, we created a network of teams that will establish strong relationships with local communities and begin to generate movements over the coming months, so look out for more information on my role in that.

Of course, I kept up with my other passion - my volunteering with The Truth 365 - all week as well. Because I was away all week, I put the pinterest and tumblr on hold for a bit and focused on the Twitter, which I was able to keep up with on my phone. Now, however, I'm back on all three!

This week has been crazy, trying to get caught up with sleep and get back into the swing of things here in DC. I have spent time reconnecting with old friends and exploring the city, as well as spending some time with my older sister.

But none of that is really that interesting, is it? Back to the crocheting.

Pictured below is one of my first complete crochet squares:

I'm probably prouder of this square than I should be, considering that it's a little bit lopsided and I'm pretty sure I dropped a stitch somewhere along the line. Regardless, I am getting better each square I complete and I'm learning new stitches along the way. As I mentioned, I hope to have enough squares to create a blanket by the time school starts in September.

Square count: 4 (hey, I'll get there eventually!)

Intro-to-Crochet

Week 2 of my internship, and still going strong. I've been hard at work learning about the programs my department works on, and the other interns are all fantastic. I've also started working on social media for The Truth 365. I now manage Pinterest boards and the Tumblr account for the organization, as well as their Twitter handle.

Next week, I'll be traveling to Clinton, Tennessee with my department at the Childrens Defense Fund for a national training institute in child policy advocacy. In addition to our training, there will be over 2,000 young leaders training for the Freedom Schools program, which provides literacy support to underpriveleged children across the nation.

Of course, I'll have plenty to keep me occupied during my 10-hour journey on a bus. In addition to bringing my latest book, I'll certainly have a crochet hook and a ball of yarn. I've decided that to learn to crochet, I'm going to make small squares of various colors throughout the summer. Each 6" x 6" square will be a chance for me to learn a new stitch or pattern. At the end of the summer, I hope to have a large enough collection of squares to be able to compose at least a small blanket out of them.

To create the squares, I'm using yarn that's been left over from previous projects. Right now, I'm working with the red yarn that's left from this pair of legwarmers:

This pair of legwarmers was fun to create and quick to finish. Knit on straight needles in a double rib, I simply had to make sure that I counted the correct number of rows before switching colors and increased evenly on both sides. I love working with red and yellow together (there's a little Gryffindor in everyone), especially when I find the two colors with such strong contrast. By itself, the yellow is nearly blond and the red has a bit of an orange tint, but together, they are the perfect combination for fall, when this photoshoot occurred.

Pictured here is Olga, who has been a wonderful friend to me since I began my freshman year and has been incredibly supportive of my endeavors in knitting. The photos are by Emily, who I feel the need to mention is studying abroad in Vienna right now (mostly because I'm incredibly jealous of her). You can read all about her adventures here.

As always, check out more of my knitwear on my Facebook Page.