Wednesday crafternoons in the Women’s Center

Minnesota State’s  Women’s Center hosted its first Crafternoon of the semester Tuesday, where students were invited to create art with perler beads. Several students turned their art into keychains or jewelry.

Abby DeGroot and Paige Norberg, who have volunteered to run Crafternoon, said “It was a previous thing that the women’s center was doing, that I then started helping last year, and I find it’s just nice for students to come together and have an opportunity to just relax and just enjoy each other’s company between hard classes and having to do work or anything else. It’s just a really nice opportunity for students to come together, and who doesn’t really like just coming and doing little crafts and bringing them back to your dorm?”

Norberg also said, “Right now we have supplies in the supply closet, so we’re going through that.”

“If a student comes up with an idea, we’ll try to make it work out. Or, we see recurring crafts that either people are like ‘Oh, I didn’t get to do that one, I’d love to,’ or they’re like ‘That was the coolest one.’ So then we do ones that we know students will want to engage with and come to,” DeGroot said.

“We’re able to just sit together and talk while doing the crafts, and usually there’s a ton of people I’ve never met before and we just have a conversation together about what the craft is that leads to one conversation and another conversation. I’ve met good friends of mine through this,” Norberg said.

“Anyone is allowed to come to the Women’s Center, everyone is welcome. We have different products, such as menstruation products and other types of hygiene products. We have two wonderful advisors that you can come and make appointments to talk to, they’re very lovely and listen, and it’s just a place to come together and relax. Typically something’s playing on the TV, so it’s really just a relaxing atmosphere that has resources if you need them,” DeGroot said.

“Our future plan is to, hopefully, if we can get enough traction with Crafternoons, is to maybe have a bigger event that’d be later in the day for more students to show up, and do kind of a bigger craft, but that would take enough students coming to crafts and be interested in that. That is something we’re hopefully trying to work up to either this upcoming semester or next semester,” DeGroot said.

Crafternoons will be held in the Women’s Center every wednesday from 1-2:30 p.m. in CSU 218; all students are welcome to stop by and relax with a fun craft.

Write to Ellie Meschke at eleanor.meschke@mnsu.edu

Header Photo: Students gathered yesterday from 1-2:30 p.m. in the Women’s Center CSU 218 for the weekly event “Crafternoons.” Fuse beads were this week’s craft. (Ellie Meschke/The Reporter)