February is a time for people to display their acts of affection for the special people in their lives. NMSU’s Crochet Cuties celebrated by making Valentine’s Day-themed crafts to give to loved ones during their weekly project meeting on Feb. 12.
Every Wednesday, the Cuties provide patterns of varying skill levels for anyone interested in crocheting and work on different themed projects. During the week of Valentine’s Day, the options were envelopes for beginners, leggy hearts for those at the intermediate level, and animals holding hearts for more advanced crocheters. The Crochet Cuties’ executive team provides yarn of various colors, but they also recommend participants bring their own tools.
The president of the Crochet Cuties Club, Zoey Montoya, has been crocheting since she was a junior in high school and watched the public’s interest in crocheting evolve.
“Every time I crochet in class, or I crochet, like, in public people are always like, ‘Oh, I could never do that. Like I want to learn, but I could never do that,’” Montoya said. “And I’m like, ‘But you could.’”
Montoya said she was inspired to make the Crochet Cuties Club after noticing a lack of fiber arts at NMSU.
“It’d be cool if, like, we could finally start fiber arts and actually have a crochet club,” Montoya said. “Because I know a lot of people want to learn, but they just, like, YouTube videos don’t work, or the people that they’re learning from, like, don’t know how to teach them correctly.”
Kendra Sarabia is the secretary and Montoya’s childhood friend. Sarabia joined the club to support Crochet Cuties’ goal of creating community.
“It started with [Montoya] coming to me and being like, ‘I really want to do this thing,’ and I’m like, ‘Let’s make it happen,’” Sarabia said. “Because I feel like, beyond just crocheting, having a community of people where you can literally just relax once a week and just come and chill, have fun, bonding over the same thing, it’s nice.”
Marisol Perry was inspired to crochet by the women in her family. Perry has been crocheting since she was a freshman in high school and learned about the club through Instagram. Perry attended the meeting on to work on handmade projects for her small business.
“I think everybody should learn how to crochet,” Perry said. “It’s so much fun, and it’s just like, I don’t know, it brings me so much peace and happiness and hot girls have grandmother hobbies. That is a hill that I will die on.”
Julia Huebert joined Perry at the meeting to work on the Valetine’s envelope. She encouraged others to branch out and try crocheting because of the fulfillment it provides her.
“It’s a rewarding hobby,” Huebert said. “I like to play video games, too, but sometimes I feel like you play, you turn the computer off. What do you have to show for it? I love making something silly, and then I just look at it and go, ‘Aw, I love it.’”
In the future, Montoya wants the people who attend the weekly Crochet Cutie club meetings to get to know one another and increase the difficulty of the work they create to begin selling.
“So I feel like my big goal is, like, create a really strong community and also teach everyone,” Montoya said. “And we get to a really strong point where we can do hard projects, and we can start selling our creations.”
For more information about the Crochet Cuties, and where they meet, can be found on their Instagram.
