Jeffersonville club knits 1,000 sweaters for needy kids

August 20, 2008 11:53 am

— Eleanor Eby’s grandmother taught her to knit when she was 7 years old. It’s doubtful, though, that her grandmother ever imagined she would have helped knit 1,000 sweaters for needy kids around the world.
“(Sweaters) go to Appalachia, Harlem, Bosnia, Africa, China, all over,” Eby said. “One of the girls saw a sweater on a child in Africa on the television. The more (sweaters) we knitted, the more we wanted to knit — it just snowballed.”
Eby belongs to a knitter’s club that meets weekly at St. Luke’s United Church of Christ. And since 1996, the group has gotten together to knit sweaters for Knit for Kids, reaching 1,000 this year. The group averages about seven sweaters a week, Eby said.
They sit around two fold-out tables in a small basement room surrounded by towering plastic bins. The bins hold every color of yarn imaginable — red, green, yellow, magenta, beige, blue — and five finished sweaters woven in multi-colored strands lay finished on the table in front of them.
Knit for Kids counts clubs across the U.S. in its army of knitters making sweaters for kids. The organization has donated almost 500,000, and there are no plans to stop now.
Before they started knitting sweaters for Knit for Kids, the group knitted baby caps for Clark Memorial Hospital. And when the local knitter’s club in Jeffersonville completed its first 400 sweaters in 2004, former Jeffersonville mayor Rob Waiz signed an official declaration naming March 30 “Knitter’s Club Day.” The club relies on donations of yarn, and money, which they use to buy yarn, or they purchase it out of their pockets for the sweaters.
The knitter’s club began 24 years ago in a former member’s home, and moved to the church 18 years ago, said member Elizabeth Elliot.
“I got to thinking why don’t we have it here — I won’t have to clean my house all the time,” Elliot said, with a wink and a laugh.
The club meets regularly every Tuesday morning, and the women involved are now bringing up a new generation of knitters, starting with 14-year-old Colleen Willenborg. She joined the group after hearing about it at church, and though she wasn’t an expert then, she has been learning quickly each week.
“I really learned how to knit here,” Willenborg said. “It’s really fun and creative — you can make your own stuff.”
Though the veteran knitters are more than happy to knit for others — “we’ve knitted so much we don’t need to knit for ourselves anymore,” Eby said.
Knitting has been steadily regaining a following in recent years. Knitting clubs are popping up all over the country, and it’s not just grandmothers knitting afghans.
Eby said she knits to relax and take her mind off things, and Elliot knits to keep her hands moving and busy. But whatever the reason, the sweaters the group continues to knit are helping kids across the globe.

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