• Knitting With a Group

Knitting With a Group

This office party met twice a week and produced a wonderful afghan, which was donated to a local charity.

Knitting for charity is personally rewarding because you're doing something good for someone else, who is usually a complete stranger you'll never meet. But knitting for charity can also be a lot of fun when it's done with a group. Several years ago I worked for a publisher in Boston. Because there were lots of long and sometimes boring meetings to sit through, I knitted during them, which sparked the interest of knitting colleagues. Before long, a Tuesday and Thursday knitting group assembled in the large atrium of our office building. We worked on our own projects for a while and then decided to work together on a pieced afghan for charity. Each of us chipped in for the yarn and worked on squares as a group and at home to create the 49 squares. The afghan was donated to Rosie's Place, a sanctuary for poor and homeless women. We like to believe that it brought warmth and a little hope to the recipient.

The owner of my LYS (local yarn shop) was recently a regular at a local cancer treatment center. She realized there was a need for chemo caps and put out a call to her customers to assemble on a Saturday and Sunday to knit them. All yarn bought for the hats was 15 percent off, and the store provided a variety of free patterns. More than 20 knitters showed up on both days and for following sessions. It was wonderful to sit and knit with both familiar and new faces, and in the end, there were more than 100 hats donated to the center. This event is only one of many things I'll miss about my former LYS, Ewe'll Love It! in Nashua, N.H., when it closes for good sometime this summer.

Judith Durant
Perfection-Seeking Knitter

Judith Durant loves to knit and to write, and writing about knitting is the best. She has authored, co-authored and edited many books about knitting and beadwork, including Never Knit Your Man a Sweater, Knit One, Bead Too and the best-selling One-Skein Wonders series. She is currently co-authoring a technique book with Dorothy T. Ratigan titled Knitting Know-How: Techniques, Lessons and Projects for Every Knitter's Library, which will be published in July 2012.

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