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Using her right hand to crank a knitting machine and her left to hold the yarn, seventh grader Maddie created a tiny hat in less than thirty minutes during her lunch period on Wednesday.
The hat she made will eventually be given to a premature baby at a local hospital. Maddie’s efforts are a part of an ongoing project at Crittenden Middle School in Mountain View, where students can sign up for bi-weekly lunchtime knitting sessions to make hats for donation.
“We can make a difference in an easy way that could actually help people while still at school,” Maddie said.
The idea for the project came from the school’s library technician, Gayatri Ratnam, who was trying to find an activity that didn’t require students to use any electronic devices.
“I was looking for a project where they would make something, gain a skill, but then be generous with that skill and give the finished product to somebody else,” Ratnam said.
After some research, she stumbled upon some hand-crank knitting machines that could be used to make items very quickly, which was important because she knew that students had limited time for activities during lunch. Ratnam purchased two machines, as well as some yarn, with money from Crittenden’s PTA.
One PTA member, Teresa Peters, reached out to El Camino Health – an organization that operates several Bay Area hospitals, including one in Mountain View – to see if students could make hats for babies. She learned that the hospitals accept colorful knitwear made with yarn that isn’t wool or feathery. PTA Vice President Puja Patankar took one of the machines home to test its ease of use and figure out how to make hats with the right measurements.
“We were kind of shocked at how small they had to be,” Patankar said. “It was unbelievable.”
Patankar now volunteers to walk students through how to make the hats every other Wednesday during lunchtime.
“It’s a nice thing for middle schoolers to have that opportunity for service,” Patankar said. “It’s really powerful to have that experience within a lunch period.”
Currently, with just two machines and one parent volunteer, only two students can participate every other week. Eventually, Ratnam and Patankar would like to expand it so that more kids can get involved, but that would require another person to volunteer.
This Wednesday, alongside Maddie, seventh grader Akaisha also spent her lunch hand-cranking a knitting machine. The pair signed up to participate in the project after hearing about it from Ratnam.
“It sounded like fun, and I wanted to help the newborn babies,” Akaisha said.
So far, students have made a total of seven hats using the knitting machines. Once they’ve completed 20, the tiny headwear will be sent off to El Camino Health.
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