My Favorite Charities

I was a good girl last night and wove in all the afghan square ends. I just added 9 squares to my sidebar list of "100 Things for Charity". That brings my current total to 88 items so far this year, although so many of them are afghan squares of one sort or another that I feel a bit like I am cheating! But I am going to shift gears now and work on hats, mittens and scarves. I have a feeling that I will end the year having exceeded my goal. (And for those of you who might be visiting from Fiber Freaks, I haven't forgotten about our afghan project. I have just decided to hold off making squares until I receive everyone else's. Then I will know how many squares I need to make to finish up the blanket.)

Since it will probably take me a day or two to change gears here, today I want to talk about a question that Amy posed over at Warm Up Winchester. She had a contest earlier in the month. She asked everyone to answer the question "What is your favorite charity?" Unfortunately, I went on vacation right about then and so missed the deadline for the contest. However, I keep thinking about the question, so I am going to answer it anyway.

Of the 3 charity projects my crochet guild works on every year, I think my favorite is the Salvation Army. I really enjoy the practise I get making hats and scarves. I try out new stitches in the scarves, and I can experiment a little with color combinations. I also really enjoyed going with Dee and Grace to deliver our donation last year. That made what we are doing very real to me. I hope that it works out that I can go with them again this year.

Of all the online projects I have worked with, I think that last year's Soaring Eagles project still ranks as my favorite. I enjoyed making the hats, and I really enjoyed shopping for some other goodies for the kids as well. I also liked that a small group of us worked on the project, and so I was able to visit blogs and get to know people a bit. And, of course seeing the pictures of the kids as they received their items made it all worthwhile.

I guess my bottom line is that I like working on charity projects with smaller groups of people. I know that every donation is needed, but when there are hundreds of people making thousands of items, it is easy for me to feel that it doesn't matter whether I donate or not. (It's not necessarily right for me to feel that way, but it is easy for me to feel that way.) Working with smaller groups keeps some pressure on me to donate and helps to keep me focused on the project at hand. So this year, Warm Up Winchester is my online small group project, and I am very glad to be a part of it!