This year's chosen charities

Reporting back on our knit & stitch group's summer lunch out on Tuesday. We had a brilliant turnout with around eleven of us at the local cafe, given that it's summer and a lot of folks are away. The food was great and the company even better!

With the proceeds from our last fair, we're in the wonderful position of being able to support more than one local charity. The decision was made to split the kitty across the following groups:

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  The local dementia group, who are self funded.
  
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  The Girls Brigade who need a new gazebo, having lost theirs at the last fair to a rather nasty gale force wind.
  
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  The local pet sitting service charity the council use when people go into hospital suddenly with no one to take care of their pets.
  
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  Ourselves. We need a couple of folding chairs for manning stalls.
  

In between knitting stock for stalls, we do other charity knitting. We churn out a fair amount of twiddle muffs that are used for dementia patients by a number of hospitals and other groups. They are used to give patients something to do with their hands, so there are lots of fiddling things attached. This apparently helps to alleviate angst and has a calming effect.

We also knit "fish and chips" jumpers and hats, as well as teddies for a hospital in Malawi. The reason they are called fish & chips is because infants would be wrapped up in newspapers when ready to leave the hospital as they had nothing else to clothe them in. Now little ones get to leave with warm clothing and a teddy.

Breeding one square bunnies

We've embarked on a journey that has only been shared with a handful of people closest to us. I'm not really just sitting around at home doing nothing but knitting. I'm actually studying- doing a diploma in Child Psychology in preparation for a career change. After many years thinking about it, we've decided to become Foster Carers. We completed our initial training last weekend, which is a prerequisite before you can officially apply. It's taken 9 months to get to this point, and will take at least 6 months if not more before we get approved. So, while we wait for the assessment process to be completed-I'll keep busy knitting.

On to the knitting then shall we? Our last charity stall was very successful. We were left with very little stock by the end of the day. The braided balls, and bunnies were very popular with the school kids. I've started building up stock for the next fair, and this time I've made sure to take some pics of the completed bunnies. In addition to the bunnies I've done a few snowmen. I hear you sniggering. It's never too early to start preparing for Christmas!
I've also conjured up a couple of critter key chain charms, a cat, and a couple of bangles. When I tire of knitting for the stall, I've got jumpers and teddy bears to knit for our church outreach to Nkhoma hospital in Malawi. If I've got time in between the studying and foster care assessment I'll probably squeeze in a critter or two for my Etsy shop, and maybe an occasional blog post 😝