We thought that this organization could allow our fellow peers to relieve stress. The goal was to create a safe space for our peers to comfortably relieve stress through the hobby of crocheting.
Three senior girls at Veterans Memorial Early College High School have started “Crocheting With a Purpose,” a club that crochets baby octopuses for premature babies and shares the mental health benefits of crocheting.
“We are three seniors, Janet Velasquez, Elizabeth Gonzalez, and Jolette Oliva, with a passion for crochet. With each having different experiences with crochet, we found each other in high school and thought that starting a crochet club would be a nice way to teach others a new skill,” the trio said in an email to The Brownsville Herald.
In an interview the girls said Gonzalez and Oliva already knew how to crochet and taught Velasquez the skill. The trio started the club at the suggestion of a teacher who gave birth to a premature baby and had discovered that knitted baby octopuses had a calming effect on the infants as well as on the crocheters while they were making them.
“After experiencing the mental health benefits of crocheting, we created this club so it could help contribute to the mental health of other students in our high school. We thought that this organization could allow our fellow peers to relieve stress. The goal was to create a safe space for our peers to comfortably relieve stress through the hobby of crocheting. We created a healthy environment for students to feel free of outside distractions and to keep their worries away.” they said in the email.
The girls said one reason to crochet was to “help premature babies by creating crochet octopuses that would allow them to feel safe. Premature babies have the tendency to pull something and can accidentally pull the tubes that are attached to them. An octopus’ tentacles imitate the umbilical cord and breathing tubes, which makes them feel at ease,” they said.
To date the club has about 20 members. On March 3 they held a crochet marathon in the school library during which members made about a dozen of the soft octopuses, They later gave them to the neonatal unit at Valley Regional Medical Center and plan a similar donation to the Valley Baptist Medical Center neonatal unit as more octopuses are made.
Another crochet marathon in planned for mid-April.
Oliva said she had seen her mother crocheting during the pandemic and taught herself the skill using YouTube videos.
“It has helped me relax a bit more when it comes to anxiety and stuff like that,” Velasquez said. “When you’re overthinking things too much, it keeps you distracted.”
There has been considerable interest about the club, with students asking club members about it and teachers asking the same question of Erica Araujo Flores, an architecture and computer science teacher who suggested the club
“It has been a great experience for us to have created this club and have found that many of our members found it very interesting and helpful. We hope that we will continue to teach them well and inspire them to continue the club even after we graduate. We hope that our club will continue to help teens in our school and have a positive impact on our community,” the girls said in the email.
