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Ministry spins cheer for others
Knitters, chrocheters find niche at churches
Friday, Oct. 10, 2008
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photos by DARWIN WEIGEL
Knitters peruse the free yarn table Saturday at the yarn ministry gathering at Huntingtown United Methodist Church in Huntingtown.
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While calling for knitters and "hookers" from the pulpit — and putting her pastor's mind to rest that those who crochet are called "hookers" — Mealy started the ministry within the Huntingtown United Methodist Church.
A bigger surprise — bigger than finding many women in the parish answered the call — was to learn that other Calvert County churches were sponsoring knitting missions as well.
Sally Douglass of Christ Church in Port Republic had joined her parish's knitters when it began. It was at least 10 years ago, she was certain, but struggled to recall how much longer. It is maybe closer to 20 years, according to some of her fellow parishioners.
Douglass' church sponsored the first gathering of the yarn ministries this past spring.
"Getting together," she said, "it's really awesome."
So awesome that Mealy's Huntingtown United Methodist Church sponsored this month's Yarn Ministry Gathering with a buffet, yarn swap, pattern exchange and fellowship.
About 30 women attended, representing eight local churches, all committed to one or more knitting projects for the area's elderly, ill, needy and especially for those feeling forsaken.
It was a young student volunteering at a local nursing home that Mealy recalled. An older woman at the home received one of the prayer cloths made by Mealy's Knitting Slippers for the Soul. But the student, who Mealy recalled as depressed, left with a prayer cloth. Mealy and her fellow knitters and hookers have no doubt it helped.
Prayer cloths, explains the small typed card that accompanies the prayer cloths knitted by Knitting Slippers for the Soul, are "found throughout Christian history and in the Bible, prayer cloths originated as a means of spreading prayers. Traditionally prayer cloths were taken from the clothing of the saints and apostles and even Jesus Christ … However, it is not the cloth that is responsible for the healing. It is the faith of the believer who receives the cloth that brings healing and comfort."
Mealy knows something of this, herself a survivor of breast cancer which, she explained, led to selecting October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, for this second Yarn Ministry Gathering.
Both she and fellow parishioner and breast cancer survivor Nancy Dennis formed Knitting Slippers for the Soul nearly four years ago. Of the 14 women who participate, two additional members are breast cancer survivors.
"We've all come to think of knitting as our ‘mental yoga.' Knitting has gotten many of us through some tough times," Mealy wrote after the gathering. "The special relationships that have grown out of our knitting group have woven long lasting bonds."
The sentiments were similar among all of the women and their particular yarn ministries.
In addition to prayer cloths, many of the women knit mittens, scarves, hats, slippers and "fancy dancy stuff," Mealy said, for Project Safe Harbor, a local shelter for abused women and their children. These families arrive "desperate," Mealy said, often with only the clothes on their backs.
Last year, she said, there were 16 children in the shelter at Christmas time and her ministry gathered the ages and genders and began knitting for the children who ranged in age from infancy to 16 years old.
Other items include chemo hats, in particular for women undergoing chemotherapy, and baby hats for newborns. Mealy reported that a nurse at Calvert Memorial Hospital had estimated that about 700 baby hats had been given out by the yarn ministries.
Although many of the ministries involve distressing times for recipients, including bereavement blankets for babies, lots of prayer cloths and shawls and other wraps for hospice patients, the women are far from mournful about their goals.
"I'm a hooker," said Dee Hamilton, explaining that she used to knit but returned to crocheting. "It's a lot faster. I like to see my progress."
Hamilton was lightly wrapped in a yellow knitted shawl she said a friend had finished for her because she herself had grown weary of knitting. And most of the women in the room were wearing scarves, sweaters or other items they had knitted. The activity of knitting and crocheting can be as important to these women as the gifting.
"I think that we all have something that truly identifies us as individuals," Mealy wrote, "and knitting definitely is one thing that identifies me. I think I can also say that this is true for most members of our group, Knitting Slippers for the Soul."
For Mary Ewaski of Mt. Harmony/Lower Marlboro United Methodist Church, it was her youngest daughter who wanted to learn how to knit that brought her to the ministry. When the call in her church went out in January 2006, one long-time knitter taught others and the group, including Ewaski and her daughter, learned to make scarves, blankets for shut-ins and projects they sent to the Methodist's Red Bird Mission in Kentucky.
Indeed, said D.J. Templeman of Grace Brethren Church of Calvert County, there are a number of mother/daughter teams within the yarn ministry at her church.
"You don't have to belong" to the church, Mealy said.
And you don't need to know how to knit.
"We will teach," she said.
"We learn from one another," concurred Dennis, co-founder of Knitting Slippers for the Soul.
Mealy praised the variety of styles the group brought to the table. One woman at this month's gathering had learned to knit from her mother who grew up in England. It was a different style than either Mealy or Dennis had used.
"My mom taught me to knit slippers about 40 years ago," Mealy said. "We all knit differently. How we do it [has to do with] who we learned it from."
Still, "knitter talk," as Dennis called it, filled the room and no matter what each woman's tradition, they understood. They gathered over a long row of tables where the wide variety of projects was displayed and they discussed "increase and decrease" and knitting "in the round" and "binding off" and "yarn over."
"Do you have the pattern?" Dennis suddenly asked another woman. "Can you e-mail it?"
Douglass laughed at a novice's surprise.
"We get patterns off the Internet," she said.
"Our goal," Mealy confessed, "is to live long enough to use up all our yarn."
But the table piled high with yarn some knitters and hookers wanted to give away and others wanted for their next project belied the likelihood that anyone would run out of yarn. Mealy herself laughed at the pile and said that their other goal was finding new causes to donate to.
