Rhonda Moore--Crocheting for Charity

From Rhonda Moore

My mother taught me how to knit when I was 11 years old. I had always been a crafty little girl. I used to make clothes for my dolls and stuffed animals out of old socks. All growing up I did different crafts, art projects.

After high school I went to cosmetology school and worked as a hairdresser until complications during pregnancy put me on bed rest. I was a stay at home mom for a while after that. After leaving my abusive husband, I had to go back to work.

What better place can a crafty girl get a job than at Michael's! It opened up a whole new world of crafts and art! I went through many different mediums. I tried needlepoint, silk ribbon embroidery, painting, pastels, quilting, you name it! I was decent at most of them. Then I decided to quit my job and go back to school! I got my degree in Graphic Design and worked as a Graphic Designer/Studio Manager for a photography studio and taught private Photoshop classes to photographers on the side.

In 2003 my son was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome (a form of Autism). Being a single mom, working full time and dealing with a special needs child, I lost a lot of my energy to do crafts in my spare time. Other than being creative at work and the occasional karaoke night, I had no creative outlet. In 2005 I began to get really bad headaches and I thought it was just from looking at a computer screen all day long. Then I began to get wide spread pain in my whole body. In October 2006 I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. In August of 2007 the pain had gotten so bad that I had to quit working all together.

I am not one to sit around, so I got into quilting, but sitting at a sewing machine was not working with the pain either.  Instead, I decided to get back into my knitting, which I could do while laying in bed. I wanted to learn some more complex patterns so I went on YouTube! In my search I stumbled upon some crochet videos and thought, “Hey, I wanna try that!”

In 2010 I picked up my first hook! After making some square patches (back and forth to practice) I decided to go all out and make an afghan! It came out beautifully!

I was hooked--pun intended! I made some flowers for some of my beanies that I had knitted. During this time, while playing Farmville, I made a friend who lived all the way across the country, and who also crocheted. We got to talking and thought, we should do some projects for charity!

We knew we would probably need some help so in July, 2011 Charity Crochet Exchange was born! I started a group on Facebook and posted the link on all kinds of different crochet pages and we grew fast! We did our first project in August, 2011.

We both had friends and family in the military so our first project was for our troops. Our members made their squares, sent them to me and I did the assembly. We made 2 red, white and blue afghans for injured vets in long stay hospital care. There were 10 members who worked on that project.

Shortly after, my co-founder had some personal issues and had to leave the group. With the growing number of members and projects, I needed some help. Two of our members went above and beyond and had as much time on their hands as I did, so I made them my admins!

Finally, I had HELP!! With their help with all of the administrative aspects of the group, finding charities and such, it freed me up so I could concentrate on the assembly. I do all of the assembly, unless we have a HUGE project that I cannot do alone. Our second project was for ASPCA. We tried to do projects that meant something to our members, and still do.

Now going on 2 years, we have over 100 members, and we have done 24 afghans for various charities, plus hats and scarves and our latest project we did more than 60 lapghans for a nursing home local to one of our members. Our event calendar is booked every month till the beginning of 2014. We are now getting requests from charities who wish to have one of our afghans for an auction or raffle.

It is amazing to me how watching one YouTube video can lead to this! Crochet, for me, has been a life saver! Not only does it keep me busy when I can't get out of bed, but it has brought a purpose to my life. When you are unable to work, you start to become depressed. You feel worthless, lazy, like a completely unproductive member of society. I no longer feel that way. Charity Crochet Exchange makes me proud of what I do. It makes me feel know, even though I can't work, I can do something to help people (or animals) who may be worse off than I am.