At first glance it’s just a burgundy stocking cap. You could get a similar style hat from a mega-store for a few bucks.
But don’t tell that to the
members of the University Student Fibers Guild, a group of University students with a knitting obsession and a student program aimed at giving back to the community through their
own hands.
To them, that burgundy cap
represents hours of striving for
perfection.
The guild, founded in 2003 and seeking ASUO funding next year, has seen increasing interest from University students and has found ways to involve beginning knitters in charitable projects.
“We pick projects that people want to do,” said Yvonne Ellsworth, guild co-president. “It’s really nice to teach the beginning knitter just to knit a square.”
So on Sunday, it wasn’t a surprise that the group, equipped with a third-floor two-room EMU office the size of a common cubicle, found 31-year-old graduate student Sarah Burtner at its door.
She’d heard about the guild’s weekly Sunday afternoon meetings in which members knit, weave, crochet and teach anyone who’s willing to learn.
“I think my strongest impression was a surprise at how young the core of the group is,” Burtner wrote in an e-mail. “Partly because I have friends who knit who are my age or older, and partly because when I’d read of their charity work, I imagined an older bunch.”
More experienced knitters donate gloves, hats and scarves as well as more complicated projects.
The burgundy stocking cap?
It’s going to Womenspace, a local domestic abuse center, along
with an afghan throw blanket with about 100 personally knit six by six inch squares.
“We’re over halfway there,” said Sara Asher Morris, guild co-president. The guild hopes to have the blanket completed by the end of the term, she said.
Elaine Phillips, Womenspace’s development director, is excited about the afghan not only for its symbolic significance, but also for its convenient timing with the center’s anticipated move to a new building in June.
“When people spend that much time thinking and working on it, and making something like that, it really talks about how invested we all are and how much time we spend as a community dealing with this issue,” Phillips said.
Morris said they wanted to raise awareness about victims of domestic violence.
“We’re going to make a nice fuzzy soft afghan that they can cuddle up with and know that people care about them,” she said.
The fibers guild, which has gained national press on MSNBC.com and the Knight Ridder wire service because of a surge in knitting’s popularity, has also been making pint-sized hats and donating them to the March of Dimes, a project centered around aiding premature babies. Last term, the guild donated 26 hats to the March of Dimes and hopes to add to that number this term.
They donated knitted items to soldiers in Afghanistan last term
as well. Future charitable projects include hats for chemotherapy
patients.
Burtner’s pink knitting needles and teal yarn compliment her
purple-rimmed glasses and tangerine T-shirt. Self-described as “crafty,” she was making progress only 40 minutes into her first
knitting experience.
She listed “clothes and
blankets … Christmas gifts and things to donate,” as possible future knitting projects.