South Ridge Elementary School’s Crochet Club creates community connections

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The South Ridge Elementary School library is usually pretty quiet. 

That is, until the after-school Crochet Club livens up the place. 

Third-graders Liberty Glessing and Marta Krawczyk pull out their projects and get to work. Liberty, in her first year of crocheting, is working on a scarf while Marta, in her second year, just finished a bright orange headband. 

“I joined Crochet Club because Marta wouldn’t stop talking about it!” Liberty said in a news release from the school district. 

However, Liberty joined Crochet Club for another reason as she is preparing to have surgery for a leg length discrepancy, an operation that will require her to be in a wheelchair for several months during recovery.

“I wanted to do something while I was in a wheelchair, so I wanted to learn,” she said. 

Liberty’s story gave the club an idea to do something for the community, so their next project will include crocheting hats for children at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital. For librarian Emily Crawford, this outreach comes full circle as her own daughter had cancer and recieved many hats while she was going through chemotherapy.



“When my daughter lost her hair, so many people donated hats; I knew it was something I wanted to do,” Crawford said. 

Her daughter has since recovered and she found it a perfect way to give back.

Crawford started her first crochet club when she was a librarian at Liberty Middle School in Camas. At the time, she didn’t know how to crochet, but Laurinda Reddig, a parent in the district, was a crochet designer and author of several books. With Redding’s help, Crawford learned to crochet at the same time as her students. Now, the club is giving back and using a hat pattern from Reddig’s book. 

The Crochet Club will be using yarn donated by Paula Labenske, the grandmother of one of the students in Crochet Club last year, for the hats they are donating.  Much like the stitches that cross and weave together, the Crochet Club is creating a lot of community connections with its giving spirit.

If you would like to help with the Crochet Club project, donations of yarn or hats are welcome and can be dropped off at South Ridge Elementary School, 502 NW 199th St., Ridgefield.