In my earlier post, I mentioned this group, supported by ISIS (Immigrant Settlement and Integration Services) and Keshen-Goodman library, because they knit for charities and they need yarn. I brought some yarn for them, and see that huge orange bag under the table? It’s full of blanket squares. One square is the very first project done by a woman who learned how to knit in this group. And those squares will make a whole blanket that will be donated to Phoenix Youth Shelter.

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A few days before I met Fireside Knitters, a person named Dulseigh contacted me and asked for assistance with the knitted items drive for the Metro Turning Point, a shelter for men. I loved her motivation behind it — she was involved in organizing Mother’s Day gifts for all the residents at two of HRM’s Women’s Shelters, so she decided to do something for men as well. There are about 80 clients who stay at the shelter, and Dulseigh hopes to collect hats and mittens that can be distributed in winter. There are no specific requirements for yarn, as long as you can make a pair of men-size mitts or a hat out of it. Dulseigh started a Facebook page, and I see some people signed up, and some people offered to donate yarn. The drop off location for finished items is The Loop. And if you wish to put yarn in hands of people who can turn it into warm hats and mittens, please bring it to the LK Yarns (please mark your package ‘For Turning Point’). Thank you!

The first two toys — a bear with flowers and a convertible Cinderella doll — are my favourite, but all of them are charming in their own way.

This cute bear lives on my computer desk.

Cinderella in rags…

… turns into Cinderella in a beautiful gown.

And all it takes is a little bit of magic.

This bear is squishy and a bit sad.

A Big Funny Bunny.

A Small Funny Bunny.

A Cute Bunny. He wears a lace collar and for some reason has toes.

A realistic rabbit with a rattle inside.

Just look at this face. Doesn’t it look like his lip is quivering too?

A stress ball cat. And I don’t even have to squeeze it to get some positive emotions.

Ninja-Cat.

This Piggy has the same cheerful body type as the first cat. She is a very content animal.

Moo!

This is a Flying Dragon.

Hissing Snakes.

Friendly Lady Bugs.

Little blue guys socializing.

A mouse with dangling limbs. Would be nice for a car.

Little Turtles are warming up in the sun.

This doll looks a bit like me, although her name is Yoko.

And this doll also has a rattle inside…

and unexpected hair colour.

In recent years, I grew closer with my mom through a shared love of handmade things. Thank you, Mom, and Happy Mother’s Day!

As you could imagine, buying yarn is not the first priority for a person who moves to another country, sometimes fleeing her own. We decided that the knitters would keep an item they knit from donated yarn (for themselves or family) and then make another one for charity. Seems fair, don’t you think? The group was also interested in a blanket project, provided I would supply the yarn. The next day I got an email from LK Yarns about a big bag of acrylic yarn donated by their customers together with some pretty blanket squares. Thank you, kind knitters of Halifax!

Now this yarn will be used for blanket squares made locally by knitters from all over the world.

I am yarn-free, and there is another blanket growing slowly.

This is a rainbow sweater and a matching hat. I used two balls of yarn for the body to make the stripes the same width that those on the sleeves. Neat, eh? This happy acrylic yarn was sold by a bag, dirt cheap, and I just couldn’t resist the colours. It was my first bottom-up construction sweater, and it took me three attempts to get the shaping right. Never again. Top-down raglan it is.

The Three Sheep Sweater. Mmm, sheep… I really enjoyed working on this project except it smelled like sheep, too. For whatever reason, natural undyed wool has much stronger smell in my experience. Maybe the colouring process and chemicals eliminate some of the farm aromas?

Baa.

This is a very warm Dinosaur Sweater. I was aiming for an Apatosaurus backlit by the sunset but if you are a paleontologist by trade, you might disagree.

This vest was supposed to be a sweater before I accidentally donated the third skein of yarn I bought for it. It was made with two skeins of Cascade 220, almost to the last yard, thus the 50/50 design.

I only managed to take one picture outside before the battery died, so this is how it looks in its entirety.

I love everything about these sweaters except the hand-washing, forever-drying part. The wool is lovely but next time I will go with its machine washable version.

And finally, please meet Footie, the cast sock. Named by the cast owner, it was used for a week to keep the little toes warm. And when the cast was off, it became a handy transportation device for small animals and marine life.

A knitter suggested that a cast sock could be a nice charity project. Personally, I think that knitting Footie had a therapeutic effect on me but it was also a necessity because it was freezing cold outside. I wonder if receiving a cast sock together with the cast at the Children’s ER or Orthopaedic Department will make any difference for hurt kids and their worried parents…

What do you think?

It’s made with the squares from the yarn store in the Valley, and a few Knitco members helped stitching it up.

Secondly, I delivered the donated yarn to two Shannex residential houses. One is called Caritas, it’s a retirement residence for the Sisters of Charity, located on the Mount Saint Vincent University ground.  The other one is Parkland at the Lakes in Dartmouth. Both have knitting groups that meet regularly, and knitters there make prayer shawls, hats, scarfs, and mittens that are later donated to the local charitable organizations like Out of the Cold and Bryony house.

I am also proud to say that I didn’t go to the yarn store to buy a set of large needles and didn’t immediately cast on a hat and a pair of mittens with that bulky wool to check what pattern would work best with this yarn. It is an accomplishment of not spending all weekend on knitting related stuff.

See, I told you it was productive.

I started accepting yarn donations to create more community connections though knitting. Reaching out to senior citizens has been on my to-do list for a long time but I had neither a good project for a start nor resources to support it. With the donated yarn and blanket squares piling up in my bedroom craftroom, it’s time to move it to the next level and involve more people. Soon I will be visiting a local retirement residence that has a weekly knitting class to promote the blankets for the Phoenix youth shelter project. According to my liaison Susan, the Recreation Coordinator at the residence, “Sisters and clients often make hats and scarves for the Out of the Cold Shelter, and hats and mittens for children.” She also said that she might have a blanket for the Phoenix Youth House that was completed by one of the Sisters who is looking to donate it to a place that would benefit from it.

And I won’t come empty-handed either.

This gorgeous selection of 100% wool was donated by Lee Serieys — thank you. I have almost as much acrylic yarn for blanket squares donated by two other knitters but it’s not as photogenic so you have to take my word for it. The wool is bulky weight and will make quick knits for hats and mittens. It was made by Condon’s Yarns (Charlottetown, P.E.I.), the company that is no longer in business. I knit up a swatch with 5 mm needles and it created nice dense fabric but I found knitting to be a little hard on the hands. Then I tried 6.5 mm needles and the fabric seemed to have more drape but was also more open. I am thrilled to see what comes out of it.

The owner of wool was moving and didn’t have room for it but she wanted to donate it for a good cause. Her daughter-in-law contacted me and we arranged the drop-off and pick-up through Dartmouth Yarns. When I asked her how she had found me, she replied “I Googled ‘yarn donations in Halifax’”. So just in case other people want to find out where to donate yarn in Halifax, the answer is here. My email is halifaxknitter@yahoo.com.

I hope to get yarn that is soft, clean, doesn’t smell funny, and in colours that won’t hurt your eyes. Both wool and acrylic are fine. The new life of unwanted/unused yarn will look like this — knitters (or their relatives) donate yarn, I find good people who would knit it into items that will be later donated to the local charities. I would also offer my services as a delivery… ahem, girl for a chance to photograph the knitted items and ensure they are finding their new owners fast.

Now I am going to hit “Publish” button and see what happens next.

A huge Thank You to all who made it possible, it turned out to be a true community project. Thank you to the unknown knitters in the Valley who made the squares, to the Gaspereau Valley Fibres yarn store who let me have them, to a knitter who delivered them to Halifax, to LK Yarns who kept them for me, and to the members of the local knitting group Knitco who helped stitching the squares together. Thank you to Gena Holley, a journalism student, who came up with the idea for a news story (I might post a link to her project later), and a CTV Atlantic who actually did cover it on the local news. Funny thing, I didn’t see it, but that’s not really important. What is important is that people took interest and hopefully it will result in more blankets.

This is Gena and Hugo, NSCC students, setting up their equipment.

The CTV Atlantic crew filming Knitco members working on their projects.

These are lovely ladies from Knitco, who volunteered to help with the project during the group’s monthly meeting.

Done! The blanket has 24 quilt-like large blocks and 216 small squares.

It was put together using a blanket stitch, a whipping stitch, a single crochet stitch, and a garter mattress stitch. The border is a single crochet all around.

I had some blocks done earlier and they provided the overall idea for the blanket. To make any sense of this colourful mess, I had to arrange little squares like puzzle pieces shuffling them around until they formed larger squares (blocks), which in turn formed “stripes” of cold and warm colours.

Some squares were larger, some smaller so the “stripes” had to be wet blocked first to fit together. It took an embarrassing number of hours to stitch up all those little pieces. That’s why I am asking for 12 x 12 inches squares for the next blanket, if you wish to join this project.

I can think of many metaphors about different colours, imperfections, and collective efforts to finish on some profound note. Instead I will tell you this. It’s a hand-made blanket with more than 165 000 stitches, and each of them was made to keep someone warm.

So I brought those squares to our knitting group meeting today, and we looked at them, and… guess what? The group decided that we will have a BIG stitching party during our next meeting, on February 4. I can’t tell you how awesome it is because we have quite a few knitters!

It also makes sense to have a trial run with the volunteers who already offered their help — I will keep you posted about that, too.

So — if you are in — get your hooks and needles ready and stay tuned!

And look what Santa brought for Christmas! A whole pile of blanket squares for the Phoenix youth shelter project! And if you didn’t believe in Santa, the real story is no less mysterious.

When I called Gaspereau Valley Fibres in Wolfville, NS to ask for their participation in the project, the owner told me that there were squares sitting in the store waiting to be picked up by a charity group. I explained that it’s just a coincidence and I wasn’t looking for them, but if those squares are not being used — and they have been there for over a year — I have a project where they would fit squarely. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

Thanks to the anonymous knitter(s) in the Valley, we have a great start for the blankets project. Other Santa’s helpers included a member of my knitting group who brought them from Wolfville to Halifax, and LK Yarns, our local drop off/pick up location. After I brought home a large box filled with colourful little squares, I sorted them by fiber content and was happy to discover that most of them are machine washable, as the project requires. To make sure and to freshen them up (a year in a plastic bag doesn’t make anything smell better), I gave them a good wash followed by a normal drying cycle. I misjudged only one or two little guys and they felted to the smaller size but these large beautiful squares that seemed to be made with washable wool or maybe a fiber blend didn’t like the bath at all. I wonder if they would behave the same way in a blanket and scrunch it up? The lesson learned is that the yarn should be machine washable and dryable.

(My apologies for exposing you to such graphic images, especially to those knitters who made the lovely squares. Fear not, they have been saved by wet blocking and will have a great future together with other natural fiber squares that need hand washing and drying flat. I will update you on that later).

After washing, there was a Big Sorting Party that resulted in a colourful display in a 3D column chart style.

There are about 10 sizes, and I wish I did the counting to impress you with the number but it occurred to me only later when the squares were stacked up neatly in the box.

I still did a little math and figured that 64 smallest  (4″ x 4″) pieces will make seven 12″ x 12″ squares. There are different recommendations for a twin size blanket but it seems that 24 (4 x 6) twelve-inch squares is a good start.

Now do you see what I see? That’s a whole lot of stitching up. I realize that many knitters might want to take a break after Christmas knitting but what about a friendly get-together for a ‘stitching-up party’? Please leave a comment or send a message if you are interested and we will take it from there.

Below is a picture of the hats display and the original message from the Auxiliary. Also, please click here for the official thank you letter.

Well done, crafters, well done.

Dear Volunteer Knitters (and those who crochet),

Thanks to knitters of the Maritimes and beyond (England, Thailand, Ontario, & USA) we have now collected over 5,500 hats and storage is becoming an issue.  Approximately 4500-5000 babies are born at the IWK each year so we are well outfitted for 2013. The hats are wonderful and are well received by parents. Of course their new little ones look adorable in their purple hats!

We look forward to receiving the hats you have ready to send to us and assure you they will be used in the program, however we are now suspending collection until Fall 2013. I will email you at that time to let you know when we are starting to collect purple hats again.  I have attached a photo of a collection of hats, as well as a Thank You note to all knitters. We do continue to need comfort dolls and finger puppets.

Thanks,

Kelly Cameron
Secretary
IWK Auxiliary

“Is it a mouse? Or a rat? It’s a bit large for a mouse… or maybe it’s because I am small? Can I eat it? Does it run? Is it soft? I think it is. I bet it is. I think I am gonna keep it.”

“M-m-m. Mouse.”

Also, the shelter is always looking for pet blankets, the only requirement is that they are machine washable. I was practicing making afghan squares for the next big project and they became this little pet blanket. It measures about 20 x 20 inches and would probably fit a cat or a small dog. However, you can make your blanket any reasonable size.

In addition, you can click here for the list of the ten most needed items listed by the provincial shelter; their address is 5 Scarfe Court, Dartmouth, NS B3B 1W4, phone (902) 468-7877.