My Knitting World

I have knitted as long as I can remember. My grandmother taught me. I used to go to her place regularly at the weekend and we would knit.

I hate knitting projects I don’t see progressing. Knitting all evening on what is to become a pullover and not seeing what I’ve done by bedtime is not for me.

Very soon I started making dolls.

My first one was called Mags, because at that time I had the hots for Mags Furuholmen, band member of the group A-ha! The band member left my life a long time ago, but the doll stayed with me for more than thirty years. It lived on my wardrobe with a nameless bear, one of my first dolls and my laughing Elmo. Until he got hurt by a friend’s little girl who came over for a visit that is.

OK, back to the knitting. Making dolls is all good and well, but what to do with them (I knit an average of 60 dolls per year)? Getting a second flat to store them? No way! But I couldn’t keep them all for myself either.

I made some for friends’ children and for children’s organisations.

Give or take fifteen years ago, I started to donate them to the “Kinderkankerfonds” (Children’s Cancer Foundation). They are located at the University Hospital in Ghent and run the department where children with cancer stay. There is room for thirty children. Downstairs they have a cosy room “De Living” with cosy seats, a kitchen and a craft’s table for the patients’ family to relax in and be close to their relatives.
Once a friend suggested I’d sell them (you pay and you get the doll) and put them up for financial adoption (you pay and the hospital gets the doll). I have done so for a good many years now and every year I don’t only take the financial adopted dolls to the hospital but also the remaining dolls and the money I collect.

Another thing I like knitting is baby hats. I have made quite a few. For one or two I adapted a toy pattern and made it into a hat. And when you can turn a toy pattern into a hat, you can do it the other way too!

I love, love, love winter and Christmas and knitting Christmas decoration is such fun, especially when you start in the summer and people think you’re a bit out of your mind.

If you like knitting and are all for easy peasy patterns, this will be a good sport for you to which I hope you will return again and again.

xxx

Ann