A Knitting Group's Quiet Crisis Gets an Answer
A Delray knitting group needs volunteers, the library turns summer reading into a fossil dig, and Arts Garage stacks two weekend nights.
A Knitting Group's Quiet Crisis Gets an Answer
After WPTV coverage, viewers stocked Loving Hands with two years of supplies. Now the Delray group needs knitters and crocheters.
For 25 years, two women have run Loving Hands, a Delray Beach knitting circle that turns yarn into something closer to medicine: hats for premature babies, blankets for children on dialysis, warm items for soldiers and veterans, comfort for NICU patients. Lately the math stopped working. Rising supply costs had made the volunteer effort harder and harder to sustain.
Then WPTV put them on the air. The response, as reported by WFLX, was the kind of thing that restores a little faith in local TV: viewers donated enough yarn and supplies to keep the group going for two full years.
So here's the useful part. Loving Hands is now turning donations away because they are stocked. What they need instead is hands. If you knit or crochet, or have been meaning to learn, this is a low-stakes way to make something that lands directly on a child receiving care or a deployed soldier. Reach them at benefithelp@aol.com.
Eight Luxury Townhomes Rise a Block Off Atlantic
Casa Avenida has broken ground at 102 SE 5th Avenue, adding another small luxury infill project to downtown Delray.
Ground broke this month on Casa Avenida, an eight-unit townhome project at 102 SE 5th Avenue, one block from Atlantic and walkable to the beach. Kastelo Development and 4TRO Development are behind it, and as citybiz reported, the four-story building will hold residences running roughly 2,800 to 3,300 square feet, with three- to five-bedroom layouts.
The spec sheet reads like a competition for the word private: private elevators, rooftop terraces, secure garages, outdoor entertainment space, and what the developers are calling elevated cocktail pools. If you live nearby, expect construction activity on that block downtown for a while.
The larger thing to track beyond the granite-and-glass details is the pattern. The project is being framed as part of a wave of smaller luxury infill going up across a coastal market with very little room left to build. Delray's downtown is not getting big towers here; it is getting clusters of high-end units squeezed onto single lots. Casa Avenida is one more data point in that shift.
The Library Turns Summer Reading Into a Fossil Dig
The Delray Beach Public Library's June 6 summer kickoff brings archaeology, paleontology, and Ice Age Florida fossils to kids ages 3 to 17.
The Delray Beach Public Library is running its summer program around a theme kids will actually show up for: digging into the deep past. S.T.R.E.A.M. into Summer Stories, which stands for science, technology, reading, art, engineering, and math, has an archaeology and paleontology twist and is built for ages 3 to 17.
The kickoff is Saturday, June 6, from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the library, 100 W. Atlantic Ave., and it is all ages. Chris Koch of Jurassic Parts is bringing real and replica fossils from Ice Age Florida, including saber-toothed cats, mastodons, mammoths, and giant ground sloths, that kids can see and touch. There will be free books, raffles, and summer reading signups. If you want to bookend the season, the July 23 grand finale brings Sharks4Kids and National Geographic explorers.
Registration is encouraged but drop-ins are welcome, so a rained-out Saturday has an easy fix built in.
Free Book Packets Come With a Monday Deadline
The library's STREAM literacy packets run June 6 through July 17, with one weekly book per child while supplies last.
Running alongside the kickoff is a STREAM literacy packet program for ages 0 to 17, from Saturday, June 6 through Thursday, July 17. Kids sit down with a librarian, make a reading contract, and set a goal. Then they walk out with an Unearth a Story bag, a free STREAM book of the week, a reading log, and activity pages.
The catch parents should note: it is one book per child per age group per week, while supplies last, and registration reopens every Friday through July 17. Books you do not claim by the following Monday at 5 p.m. are forfeited and handed to the next child. So if you sign up, build a Monday reminder. The program is funded by grants from the Community Foundation for Palm Beach and Martin Counties and Men Giving Back Southern Palm Beach County.
Two Very Different Nights at Arts Garage
Arts Garage has a May 29 anniversary fundraiser for PLACES! Summer Camp, followed May 30 by Gerald Law II & The Clutch.
Arts Garage at 94 NE 2nd Ave. is running back-to-back events this weekend that ask for different moods. Friday, May 29, from 7 to 10 p.m. is the venue's 15th Anniversary Party with 70s Jukebox, a fundraiser for PLACES! Summer Camp. It is interactive: you get a card with six A/B song choices and vote the setlist into existence during the show. Tickets run $38 to $48 with fees, and the money goes to camp scholarships and arts education access for local kids.
Saturday, May 30, from 8 to 10 p.m. shifts gears entirely. Gerald Law II & The Clutch plays behind Law's new album, Who We Are, with Arthur Brown III on piano and Daven-Roy Llewellyn on bass. Law cites a lineage that explains the room he is working in, including Langston Hughes, Stevie Wonder, Jill Scott, Robert Glasper, Erykah Badu, Common, and Luther Vandross, and frames the record around empathy and human connection. Tickets are $48 to $53 with fees.
First Friday Art Walk Reopens Arts Warehouse
The June 5 First Friday Art Walk includes the Cornell Art Museum's Persistence of Matter opening and an Arts Warehouse reopening.
Mark Friday, June 5, from 6 to 9 p.m. for the next First Friday Art Walk downtown. Two openings anchor the night: Persistence of Matter debuts at the Cornell Art Museum at Old School Square, and Arts Warehouse throws a reopening party.
The Arts Warehouse stop is the one to build around if you want the most for a free night out. It is unveiling Beautifully Broken, a new exhibition curated by Katya Neptune, alongside open studios across two floors of working artists. Admission is free, it is family friendly, and there is a 6-to-9 happy hour with $6 beer and wine. From there you can wander to Gallery Mavruk, the Addison, MAC Fine Art, Sundy Village, and a dozen other stops the walk strings together along the way.