By: Kelley Hobart:  Owner - Alpaca Direct

Mentoring others to knit and crochet is a great way to share one aspect of a healthy lifestyle.   In this day and age we parents need to be positive mentors to our children to promote healthy crafts.  What does being a mentor mean?  It means someone who imparts wisdom to and who shares knowledge with the less experienced. Who better to mentor children than their parents?   Afterall, we are the ones who would lay down our lives for them at a moments notice.

We will do almost anything to ensure their safety and comfort in life. We spend a large part of our lives grooming them into responsible adults.    We live by sound moral ethics and promote healthy living so that they will do the same when they are adults. We encourage giving back to the community and helping our fellow neighbors whenever possible.

Moms and Daughters in the local parade last summer

For my childhood, parental mentoring had it’s challenges. There were seven children in my family, four boys and three girls.  My twin sister and I were the youngest.  My dad left my mom and our family when my sister and I were 11 months old. He took the keys to the car, and I’ve never seen him to this day.  My brother, Todd, was two days less than a year older than us so mom had three babies in diapers,  no job, and no support system. Those were rough times for us, but mom kept us all together and I never remember mom sitting down when we were little.  She mentored a very strong work ethic!

My twin sister Shelley and I were inseparable

I did not have my birth dad as a mentor, but I had many other positive role models during those formative years.  One mentor was Mrs. Hupp. She was an older woman who had lost her husband and visited the coast to stay at her cabin during the summer months. I would spend weeks with her during the summer. Her cabin had no running water, and we baked many pies on her wood fueled oven. I remember the deer in the back yard and the raccoons that we fed and watched with a spotlight that shone brightly over the tree trunk that we placed the scraps on. Those were some wonderful times! I still miss Mrs. Hupp and how she mentored me to appreciate the simple things in life.

Then when I was in high school my counselor, Steve Jurist, helped me find a way to realize my dream of going to college. I was the first to get a college degree in my family and was able to change my life and lift myself from the poverty that my biological father had left us in so many years ago.

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Never miss an opportunity to help and mentor others. Show your children that you care by spending time with them. Whether you teach them to knit, bake a pie, or ride a horse, you will impact their lives. You may not realize it today, but the result will be the same. Their lives will be improved because you took the time to share a little of yourself with them while mentoring a healthy lifestyle.

I love to see mother and daughters in our store learning to knit together. It is fun to see them mentoring patience, perseverance and just sharing stories about life while they craft a hand knit item together.

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 Our daughter Lauren and I training the Alpacas

At Alpaca Direct we are proud to be part of the mentoring process when it comes to learning the fiber arts of knitting, crochet and hand-spinning yarn. We carry a full line of fiber art accessories, including hundreds of needles and thousands of yarns. Our unique selection of products also includes Peruvian hand-loomed lace scarves, luxurious alpaca socks and cuddly alpaca toys.