Doing it in public - again!

 Every year in June, there is an unusual event that takes place all over the world – or can. The World Wide Knit in Public. I wrote about it the second time I participated in it here. This year is the fifth or sixth time that it’s taken place in McGregor, and it was one of only two places in South Africa where it happened. 

This year, alas, our group was not registered because for the first time, a fee was required – in US dollars. This, I only discovered during that afternoon. We shall have to think about how to address this in 2019. 

This year, instead of an afternoon gathering, it started during the morning, extending this year’s KIP for a few hours.  

I have vivid memories of the first that I attended in 2011: we had not yet lived in McGregor for a year, so I met new folk and some have become firm friends. It seems as though there is a core of us who go each year and natter a few hours away over the clacking of knitting needles, the chink of cups of tea, or the quieter, but often quicker, flash of a crochet hook.   

McGregorites, old and young, male and female participate:

Just in case participants are not regular, but rather annual knitters, saving their skills for this annual event, needles and wool is provided for those who don’t necessarily have a project to work on. 

Each year, the McGregor KIP project is different. It began with scarves for the children in the informal settlement, completely appropriate as June is winter in South Africa and McGregor can get quite cold and frosty.  I missed a year because I was travelling on business, but the next two years we made squares for blankets. The first went to a resident who has Alzheimer’s disease and who suffers terribly from the cold. Last year’s blanket went to another resident, suffering from cancer, and whom we all thought (including her) that she’d not see the end of the year. Happily, if not in remission, the cancer has been arrested and she’s looking beautiful and healthy again.

This year the project was to make little dolls. 

Known to some as worry dolls, and for this project, they have been called comfort dolls. These little pocket-sized dolls are destined for children who have the misfortune to end up in the trauma room at the local police station. 

Post script:

I am so happy that traditional crafts are on the return.  I love that @sweetpea is making vlogs for folk to learn how to knit.  I have taken such great delight in making things as gifts and the sense of accomplishment is phenomenal.  More than that, though, is that the recipient knows that each stitch and every bit of it has passed through my hands, and it was made with love.  So it was with these dolls.  They will, I trust, at least bring a little comfort to those little mites that take them home to cuddle.

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