I'm starting a new category, "Good Things," for charity knitting. It's always been important to me to help others, although I admit that I have not been as consistent about it as I should be. But helping Laura recently with service projects for her Brownie troop has made me feel that I should dedicate more of my time to this, and set a better example for my daughters in the process. This category, then, will be a collection of opportunities for knitters such as myself to help others, through multi-, inter-, and non-denominational service organizations.
I didn't find out about the Orphan Foundation of America's Red Scarf Project until too late to make this year's deadline, and then only a few days later, I came across in my pattern stash the reply to my query about the Christmas-at-Sea program run by the Seamen's Church Institute.
Christmas-at-Sea provides holiday packages to sea and river mariners working on Christmas Day. Included in each package is a handknitted vest, socks, or watch cap and scarf set for sea mariners, and a scarf for river mariners. Unlike, say, the Red Scarf Project, whose only firm requirement is that the scarves be red, the SCI requests that one use specific patterns in superwash or acrylic, and in dark, manly colors. (This is my phrasing of their request. I had a very amusing mental image of the sailors arguing over who would get the purple scarf, but I suspect that this is not the reason.)
I'm happy to borrow the name for this category so that perhaps it may come to mean not only clever solutions to everyday living but also good things in the greater sense.
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