Ten years ago no one could have dreamed that a simple article would keep more than 300,000 children warm

Knit with Love

by Bridget Weeks
New York, New York

Ten years ago this month I wrote a short article about knitting sweaters for refugee children, and ended it by asking if anyone would like to join me. Many of you know this story—but I love to retell it—GUIDEPOSTS readers responded with an outpouring of brightly colored sweaters that arrived, and still arrive, every day at the GUIDEPOSTS offices.
    Since March 1996 you have made more than 300,000 sweaters for what is now known as GUIDEPOSTS Knit for Kids, warming children across the country and around the world.
    From your letters I soon learned of another surprise: All around the country you formed groups to work on the project. In churches, living rooms and retirement communities knitters have come together and called themselves “The Knit Wits” (many of those), “The Nimble Thimbles,” “The Sweater Girls,” “Coats of Many Colors,” the “Knotty Knitters”…you name it. Spare yarn has been donated from closets and yard sales. One knitter wrote to say, “We are certain the yarn itself is multiplying because no matter how many sweaters we make, the box of yarn continues to grow.”
    The warmth and companionship of the knitting groups has done as many wonders for the knitters as for the kids. Barbara Grieger from Portage, Michigan, described a group her mother formed. It included a “severely depressed knitter whose tense hands gripped the needles and pulled the stitches tight, who learned to trust in God’s promise never to forsake his children, and her stitches began to relax.”
    I know exactly what she means, for I have knitted my way through my own ups and downs with four friends for almost a decade. We get together every few weeks to knit and chat. Sometimes I pick up dropped stitches for Alice or just watch Ellen who can actually knit an Aran pattern. Right now I’m at work on two sweaters: a bright purple one in crochet and a gold and yellow striped one. Is it the quiet clicking or the thoughts of the children or just being together that brings such peace?
    I am often asked why I think GUIDEPOSTS Knit for Kids has touched so many hearts and moved so many fingers. First, it is the children. Helping a child who is needy and cold is something we feel honored and delighted to do. Drienie Hattingh from Eden, Utah, writes that her Knit Wits “feel wanted” and belong to a family that makes “thousands of little children feel loved and cared for at the same time! How incredible is that?”
    Second, the sweater is very easy to make—just two large T’s back to back. Knitters of any skill level can create one, and many have learned to knit just to do this. Carol Greco in Sacramento, California, was taught to knit by her grandmother and now passes her skills on to the next generation, “teaching young women how to do these almost lost arts.”
    Another question I’m asked is “Why just one pattern?” Some of you have patterns you’ve found or created and would like to use. But imagine children, who have almost nothing, watching cartons of sweaters being opened. Great differences in design or materials could create problems. The Knit for Kids sweater design is simple but an infinite variety of colors and stitches make every sweater an original. (We have Ellen’s Aran pattern on our web site for the really ambitious. But I’ve never managed to figure that one out.)
    And I hear voices asking, “What about us, the crocheters?” When requests for the sweater pattern first began to pour into GUIDEPOSTS I was surprised to get pleading letters from crocheters asking for their own pattern. The crafts magazine Leisure Arts came to our rescue. Their experts wrote a crochet pattern, and soon crocheted sweaters began to come in every mail delivery. I even took a few crochet lessons myself.
    Making sure that the sweaters reach the children who need them most is a challenging and sophisticated operation. GUIDEPOSTS has many partners to help us, including World Vision, KIDS (Kids in Distressed Situations), Feed the Children and the Children’s Hunger Fund with just the logistical expertise needed. They have taken sweater shipments to Azerbaijan, Appalachia, Sri Lanka, Mongolia, Oregon, New Mexico, Louisiana, Mississippi, Kenya, Burundi. I accompanied a shipment to orphanages in Uzbekistan and will never forget the children’s excitement as they reached out for the sweater they especially wanted.
    I have always felt that every stitch I knit carries a prayer for the children of the world. Fay Hartline of Temperance, Michigan, writes, “As I knit each sweater, I offer a prayer that God would hold in the palm of his hand the child wearing the sweater.”
    Imagine how many millions of prayers have reached the children so in need of God’s help and our love because of one small article 10 years ago, and because of you.