Sugar & Cream and one really good kid!

Okay so my daughter, the one with bad grades who is really getting herself into dutch with them, has decided that she needs to do some charity work. She joined a school group, or is that a group thru school? Not sure which came first really....called Key Club.

Basically they do a lot of community service projects and it goes hand-in-hand with her work in Girl Scouts....but mostly she does it because its just great fun!

Anyways they got together a pretty informal group to knit & crochet bandages for lepers and emergency bandages for the soldiers over seas. Its a simple pattern that calls for worsted weight cotton yarn, and each bandage needs to be a continuous strip of at least 4 ftX4inches....well I'm not sure a regular ball would go that far, but I figured with all my S&C balls I could give up one--I've got SO much.

But wouldn't you know it--not a single ball of white, natural, or ecru! Not a one...oh I've got white with the tinsel wrap, and the ecru with the color blots, and the natural with the tweed look...but it has to be the plain stuff so the dyes won't interact with wounds or meds.

So I went online to see what I could find, decided if I was going to have to buy it the 1lb cone was the way to go--she could make it for as long as she wanted to without worrying about running out in the middle of the bandage....herrschners.com wanted $14, marymaxim.com wanted $13.oo, anniesattic.com didn't have any coned cotton at all that I could find...on a whim I called Walmart--they had it, lots of it, for less than $7/lb!!!!

I got two of white, one of ecru. Tried to get a discount since it was for charity, but they wouldn't go for it...I did get to brag a bit about my daughter though!

They also have a pattern that uses the size 10 bedspread cotton with the smaller needles/hooks but she said she isn't ready to work with anything that thin....I would think the bandages would be the perfect way to get started with it myself--but I'm not pushing.

Its a really nice thing she's doing and I want it to stay fun for her.

Oh I bet some of you want the pattern? Its simple:

Size US8 or US9 needles, worsted weight cotton (undyed, no color)

Cast on enough stitches to make the rows betweend 3-4" in width (swatch it out if you need to....daughter is getting about 4 stitchs to the inch)

Row 1:knit across

Row2: repeat row 1

Repeat until bandage is about 4ft long. Cut and weave in ends.
Roll the bandages up.

They will use a guaze on the wound and then use the bandages to hold the guaze in place...they also use them like ace bandages.

They like the knitted/crocheted bandages because they can stand to repeated washings....can be boiled and treated with sanitizers...and then re-used.