baby hat

baby hat
Originally uploaded by rubylulu

this is my first knitted baby hat..I always wanted to learn to knit so i could do baby hats, well, iam on my way now..
This one is going with the other hats i have knitted so far to a charity..dont know where yet...

Question

When I joined this blog in 2009 I was so excited that I would be part of a large group of people that all have a heart to craft for charity in many different ways. Some knitting, some crocheting, some quilting and needlepoint and etc. I was impressed at the response at the beginning of this blog and the excitement that others felt as I read through many of the old posts and saw all the great pictures.
I have gone through the contributor list and many are no longer active but many are but no longer posting to this site. My big question is.....why?

August Newsletter from Handmade Especially for You

September 7, 2010

Today’s topics:

 We distributed more than 5,000 comfort scarves so far this year

 Articles about Handmade Especially for You appeared in Knit Circus and The Daily Breeze

 High school students want to participate by making comfort scarves

 Shelters appreciate our contributions

 Handmade participants donated en masse and now we are using the electronic yarn/meter-yarn winder system from Nancy’s Knit Knacks

 Individual donors help pay for ongoing expenses; volunteers keeps the process moving

 The generous contributions from yarn companies are key to our growth and success

 Affiliated groups throughout the US are gathering steam

 Handmade is reaching people in Canada, Scotland, Germany, and even South Africa

 Writing and winning grants to support a Handmade workshop is our next major goal

And now for the details:

We have reached one of our first goals—to donate comfort scarves to every shelter for abused women in Los Angeles County. We have already expanded our giving to 4 shelters in Orange County and 3 in San Diego County. Our scarf making capacity is very large and we can start sending comfort scarves to shelters in Northern CA as well. Your willingness to donate your time and creativity makes this expansion possible. It is really great to see. When I wrote the August Newsletter last year, we were cheering about having donated 2,000 scarves. We’ve come a long way in just one year. In August, we donated at least 420 scarves, which vaults our total so far this year well over 5,000!

Positive publicity has helped us a lot. At the beginning of August, Knit Circus, an online knitting magazine with many good tips and helpful articles, featured Handmade. You can find the article at http://www.knitcircus.com/index.php when you turn to page 37. We received an excellent response from Knit Circus readers.

The Daily Breeze, a local So CA newspaper, did a feature article on the students at Narbonne High learning to knit so they could make comfort scarves. Follow this link to see the photos. http://dailybreeze.mycapture.com/mycapture/emailfriend.asp?images=30884969&eventid=1053111 The kids had a wonderful time making the scarves. They were very proud that they could learn to knit and to complete a scarf. You can see their pride in the photo below.

Making the scarves had some unexpected results for the students. Lyn Almustafa, the teacher who invited me to her class, summed up the experience in a letter she wrote to Becky Moss, our contact at Skacell Knitting, who donated the knitting needles that made the project possible:

The publicity Handmade received in the Daily Breeze inspired other local high schools to establish a similar project in their schools. Christine Choi, for instance, a student at Palos Verdes Peninsula High, contacted me about starting a program there. She has taken on the entire job of organizing such a program, getting authorization from the school, advertising for members, teaching students to knit, getting needles and yarn, and bringing the finished scarves to Handmade. Her motivation is helping students achieve their service hours. Good job Christine!

Bonnie Jacobs, a new friend on Ravelry, also was inspired by seeing the Narbonne kids involved in knitting. She and her daughter, Danya, started making scarves for Handmade and came up with a big boxful in no time. Bonnie is a designer and her scarves are exceptional. What is exceptional to me, however, is that Bonnie saw the opportunity to involve Danya and Danya wanted to be involved. Now that school is starting, Bonnie wants to starts a program with Danya’s Girl Scout troop so they can make comfort scarves for abused women. Here are a few of Bonnie and Danya’s scarves:


Our comfort scarves are very important to the shelters which receive them. In August alone we received thank you letters, letters of appreciation, and certificates from Valley Oasis, House of Ruth, Haven House, Su Casa, Women’s and Children’s Crisis Center, Rainbow Services, 1736, and the Downtown Women’s Center. Here are a few examples:

Christina Satki, Director of Community Outreach at Su Casa, writes: Thank you for continuing to send those lovely scarves for the women in our shelter. They are so beautiful and each so different that it sometimes takes our women several minutes before they can decide on one for herself.

In like manner, Lorraine Hines, at Valley Oasis, says: I want to take this opportunity to thank you and your lades for taking the time to nurture the spirits of the women and children that come to Valley Oasis for healing. It takes special people to do what you do. We are blessed to have donors like yourselves. You are the answer to many prayers.

Sabrina Almaraz, Case Manager and Donation Coordinator at House of Ruth, sent a letter explaining the mission of her shelter, ending on this positive note: The services provided by House of Ruth are too important, too necessary, to let falter. I cannot begin to convey to you how grateful the women and children we serve are for your support. I thank you as well.

How do we do it? How can we make this many scarves? How can we wrap and ship them all? It certainly takes a village, and a big one at that. As you know from the previous Newsletter and our recent fundraising, the job of making the kits was becoming overwhelming. I found an electronic yarn meter/yarn winder at Nancy’s Knit Knacks. The cost was high, but the tool important, so I asked all of you to donate $10 so we could buy it. The response was huge! I mean it, Handmade’s participants are the greatest.

First and foremost, my son Mitch, went online and bought the entire system faster than I could send the last email asking for donations. It was my turn to be amazed. It was my turn to have my spirits lifted. What a fabulous thing for him to do. I was and still am very touched. But the cat was out of the bag. I had already sent out the request for donations and they started pouring in, too. At least 65 people responded. As a result, we have enough to buy a second system as soon as I get really good at using the first. In addition to our major, major donor, Mitchell Borden, Annette & Alexander Maass (our knitting couple from Germany), Betty Watts, Sandra M. Nelson, Karen Ing, Carol Summer, and Renee Hoffman made exceptionally generous donations. Donations arrived from all across the country, Germany, and England. PayPal was a big help in keeping track of the donations and making foreign donations possible. Everything worked!

Also in answer to the need of making more and more kits, Barbara Klein, Mary Gravlin, and Sharon McMann, using hand powered yarn meters and ball winders that they bought themselves, learned how to make kits. They do a wonderful job. I used to say I wound a million yards of yarn each day; they do the same—times 3. Their dedication inspires me. The more kits they make, the more scarves we receive, which requires more wrapping. Beth Phillips has joined Chris Needham in doing the wrapping to prepare scarves for delivery. In August, we had so many scarves to wrap that we had another wrapping party. Kathy Allen, Therese Shafer, Teresa Copley, Barbara Klein, Sharon McMann, Carol Maldonado, Evelyn Dow, Marie Cortez, and Chris Needham wrapped the scarves and I packed them into boxes so Barbara could ship the boxes to the shelters. What a group! What teamwork! What dedication to our cause! I love that our “village” gets bigger every month.

Yes, we make a lot of kits. We seem to have that problem tamped down for the moment. But we couldn’t make kits without the contributions of so many generous yarn companies and people. The Daily Breeze article inspired a lot of donations. Tymon Warda and Jeff Denecke from Knitting Fever, separately sent huge cases of yarn. Heidi Berger, from Trendsetter Yarns, sent a huge case. Susan Druding, from Crystal Palace Yarns, sent another huge case of yarn. They all asked what Handmade needed. I said solid colored and decorative yarns and they all sent both. Perfect. They are really wonderful. They have supported Handmade continually since spring, 2009 and have never let us down.

Betty Watts, another long time Handmade participant, recently came into a small inheritance. I don’t know what she did with all of what she received, but I know she shared some with Handmade, searching out and buying yarn bargains, ribbon, and other items Handmade needs on a daily basis. Betty also knits scarves and does whatever is needed. She checks with me often about what Handmade needs. Her generosity is really outstanding.

Good news from Handmade’s affiliates. Dr. Laura Guertin, at Penn State University, formed a group on Penn State’s campus. They call themselves the Knittany Lion Needleworks. They’ve invited members from on and off campus, including a local retirement community, and as a result have 250 comfort scarves ready to donate to The Domestic Abuse Project of Delaware County. They have received donations from Penn State and its alumni and even have a group of students in an Advanced Business Writing course helping them create materials to promote and advertise their project.

Ellen Coppell, organizer of our affiliate in Virginia, at last has made her first delivery to the Rappahannock Council on Domestic Violence. In a previous Newsletter, I said she had delivered scarves and she wrote me back immediately telling me that she hadn’t yet. Now she’s made an honest woman of me by really delivering comfort scarves. Here’s an example of the scarves she donated:

Finally, here’s the situation at Handmade today. We have a lot of yarn, but we need a lot of yarn. We need to make a lot of kits. We are making kits at 4 different locations—my house, Barbara’s house, Mary’s house, and Sharon’s house. This inconvenient set up requires a lot of coordination, making sure the right yarn is at the right location to get mixed with the right other yarn to make a color coordinated scarf which in turn makes up into a beautiful scarf. I feel we need to find a bigger location, one where we can see the yarn we have so we can make the best and most beautiful kits possible, a place where we can have shipping and receiving, even when we’re on vacation, a place where everything is under one roof, where we all can work together.

Wendy Baumring, a participant who drops by every month to pick up yarn/kits so she can crochet comfort scarves, has seen the changes at my house. She suggested Handmade start applying for grants to cover rent, overhead, shipping, etc. and she even went as far as doing the research to find which organizations might be most likely to award Handmade a grant. We met last weekend and set our next big goal—applying for and winning grants so Handmade can set up a workshop. This project also will take a village, so if you have any grant writing contacts, skills, insights, or if you want to help, we need you.

I have so many people to thank, I never can get them all into one Newsletter. But please be assured, I feel grateful to all of you. I never imagined when I started Handmade that it would be anything more than a local group who liked to knit and wanted to make scarves for abused women. I didn’t realize what an impact the scarves would have on the women and how the directors and counselors would use them as a tool to help the women begin to change their lives. The unexpected impact of comfort scarves made me want to increase their distribution. It made me want to involve more of you, more yarn companies, more knitters, more crocheters, more retirement homes, more religious groups. This is a really great thing that we all have done together. Your support and participation makes Handmade all the more meaningful to me. Thank you all so much.

If you want to donate scarves or yarn or if you want to send a check, please mail to:

Handmade Especially for You c/o Leslye Borden
30065 Grandpoint Lane
Rancho Palos Verdes CA 90275

You can also make a donation directly on PayPal.

Thanks in advance.
Leslye
www.handmadeespecially.org
501(c)3 EIN: 26-3529292