Square dancing in the library ...

That's right, but not the musical kind! Today Genny, Shirley, and Val, our square wranglers,  made a valiant effort to sort, match and make up into rug lots, the more than 300 squares which have accumulated in the librarian's office. This involves much spreading out on the library floor, getting down on hands and knees and moving squares hither and thither amid calls of - "the yellow one looks wrong!" or 'how about we put this group with that". It is a very thankless task -  no two people knit their squares to the exact same measurement - some are knitted lengthways, some mitred, some sideways and some any which way.  The end result was 8 piles of squares tied together in rug lots with a few extras included to play with, and a pile marked "challenges" - somehow, somewhere, sometime, other squares will turn up which "go" with this pile of lonely squares.

Out of respect for the ungainly nature of this "dancing" there is no photo of the wranglers in action!  Instead, a few more photos of rugs that have been made up:

And some of the items that have gone to Winter Warm - beanies and more beanies:

Busy, Busy, Busy ...

After the working bee we had last week, what better than another! This time to sort try to sort out our stash of yarn so that we take up less space in the librarian's office. We have a lot of donated yarn that never seems to be touched, even when we're desperate - although this pile is less now that we are knitting for Winter Warm , as much of the yarn that is too thick and heavy for blankets can  be used for beanies, jumpers etc as the winters are very cold in Afghanistan, especially if you are homeless and  living in refugee camps or on the streets.

So the yarn was sorted into three lots - useful for our purposes; useful when we are desperate in a yarn "drought" - much of this requires a lot of time and effort to make it suitable as it is wound in large balls using 3 and 4 different yarns together ; and unsuitable for our purposes - yarn that is very soiled and unresponsive to washing, acrylic yarn that is too fine (a lot of this might have been machine knitting yarn), cottons, and yarn that is too harsh etc.
The yarn in the useful when we are desperate pile, can be stored elsewhere; the yarn that is  unsuitable for our purposes was picked  over by the group - some was bought for private knitting - the money to be put towards buying storage boxes for the useful yarn - the soiled yarn was disposed of and the remainder will be donated to an op shop where someone else may be able to use it.

We now take up lass space in the office, and have room to bring in the stash of beautiful yarn donated by Cecilia  - but check the photo out - maybe we won't have the space after all!  I'll keep you posted!

We meet again ...

So ....  we had the first meeting of the new year last Thursday. School holidays are always a quiet time - many of us have baby-sitting duties, so it was great to see thirteen people around the table, including Sally (Ravelry name: Pompom) and Jennifer (Ravelry name: mk1k1). And both came bearing gifts of wool for the group - thank you!

We have been very lucky lately, with a large donation of yarn  from Cecilia (Ravelry name: Cecilia1) and the first of the yarn purchased with our grant from the North Epping Bendigo Community Bank. This leads us to an interesting dilemma - despite having many "famines", we now have a "feast", and the dilemma is where do we keep all these goodies? The librarians office is currently bursting at the seams with our rugs for Wrap With Love,  our knits for Winter Warm, and our stash of yarn.

I'm constantly amazed at the good humour shown by the library staff in the face of this takeover of their precious office space!  One way we can reduce the clutter in the office, is to send our completed wraps off to Wrap with Love as they are finished, rather than holding them until the ABC Knit In at Hornsby Library in August. We all love the feeling of presenting a huge pile of rugs in one hit, but our egos have to take a back seat here, so we had a working bee on Thursday  to sew labels on the completed rugs and to photograph them for our scrap book. I'll be posting photos of the completed rugs so that you can see them - in the meantime, this is the pile that have gone off to the warehouse - 27 rugs in all:

We also have two bags of clothes on the way to Winter Warm via Sally. So that frees quite a lot of space for our new goodies. We will spend some time this week sorting out the old stash - there is quite a lot of yarn there that is "desperation yarn" - only used when there is absolutely  nothing else, so that can can be stored in someone's garage in strong garbage bags until we are desperate again!

Later this week, we may be able to show you some photos of the beautiful yarn that Cecilia donated.

The story so far ....

As part of its community outreach programme, each of the libraries in the Hornsby Shire started a “Wrap with Love” knitting group to provide a meeting place during the winter months for people wanting to knit for this charity.

Our group at Epping Library first met in May 2008 with 6 women.  By the end of August 2008 when the groups participated in the handover of wraps at the ABC Knit-In at Hornsby Library, we had 14 -18 participants, and had completed 28 wraps.  Instead of going into recess over the summer months we decided to continue meeting weekly, with only a short break over Christmas/New Year, as everyone enjoyed themselves so much. When the 2009 Knit-In was  held in August this year, we were be able to hand over 70 completed wraps to Wrap With Love.

Since August 2008, our numbers have grown – the Library has provided a larger space for us, and on any week there will be anywhere from 12 to 26 people in attendance. We have 40 members with a core group of people who attend each week, a number who knit at home and attend when their family commitments allow and some, from overseas, who will attend for a period of 3 or 4 months while they are in Australia visiting their families.

What started as a charity knitting group has become a focus for women from many of the nations represented in the Hornsby Shire, to come together for friendship, the sharing of skills and knowledge, and language practice.  The places of birth represented in our group include Australia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Germany, Sri Lanka, India, Italy, England, Argentina, Singapore, Turkey and China.

Isolation can be a major problem for non-English speaking members of the community, particularly older women and women at home with small children.  For these women, the group provides language practice and an opportunity to mix with native English speaker. We are able to provide information on English language classes at TAFE, community colleges and the TAFE Home Tutor Scheme to those who wish to expand their language skills. We often have women with little or no English looking at what we are doing. We approach these women and ask  – by a mixture of sign language and the help of others in the group who speak the same language, if they would like to join us. A number have, both older and younger women. Many cannot knit or crochet but are helped by other group members to learn.

In 2008 and again this year, we had an end of year celebration where everyone brought dishes from their homeland to share. The group enjoyed this and there was much discussion and sharing of recipes.

Winter Warm

As the group’s knitting skills have grown, we have added the “Winter Warm” project to our charity knitting. This gives our members the opportunity to increase their knitting skills from those required for simple squares to the more complex skills required to knit warm items of clothing for the many babies, and homeless children in Afghanistan who have to survive winters where the temperatures fall to -15C in the winter.

In the 2009 collection, the group gave the Winter Warm Project  49 items of clothing for babies and young children.