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8
May
2020
During my wife’s last calendar year of life, she knitted a prayer shawl a month.
You may not be familiar with prayer shawls. Some are square; some triangular. Joan’s tended to be about five feet long and two feet wide, knitted with the warmest and softest wool she could buy. (The wool shop was always glad to see her!)
In the days when we could still gather for worship services, our congregation periodically held a blessing of prayer shawls. Every person either laid a hand directly on a shawl, or on someone connected to a shawl.
People have different understandings of the efficacy of prayer.
Regardless, I have no doubt that those shawls carried with them a sense of warmth and comfort to people who needed both.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: knitting, bad news, comfort
10
2017
Change does not depend on modern technology. There’s nothing modern about knitting needles – two sticks, essentially. But knitting needles lifted 45 families in Bolivia out of abject poverty.
When the rich tin mines in Bolivia closed, in the late 1980s, miners simply left in search of new jobs, abandoning their wives and children. Many of these women ended up on the streets of the city of Cochabamba. All through the Andes, women knit soft alpaca wool into sweaters and shawls.
These women had knitting skills. But no markets.
Enter a Canadian connection. Volunteers brought some of their beautiful hand-knit garments to Canada. Where Beverley Edwards-Sawatzky saw them. By organizing annual sales -- in Edmonton, Calgary, Cranbrook, and now here in Lake Country – she has been able to funnel close to $1 million to the women of the Minkha cooperative.
This is the global economy at work.
Tags: knitting, Bolivia, Minkha, Edwards-Sawatzky, global economy
13
Jul
2016
Tags: ministry, knitting
1
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: knitting, Bolivian women