My daughter does not knit, but I like her anyway. Alert readers may have noticed I am fond of the other women on the hall in her dorm too. Many of them knit. It would be hard to describe a Smith student as underprivileged, but the individual young women don't generally have money to burn. They knit for each other and for charity and they are financing part of the Smith science fiction convention (ConBust, another undertaking dear to my heart, and my daughter is actually involved in that one) with the proceeds of a craft fair.
Since I end up driving people to WEBS whenever I can when I am there, I usually have a ball or so to wind myself. While I was holding someone immobile with her hands out I had the (to me, at least) brilliant idea to endow my daughter's dorm with a swift and a ball winder. This grew into The Knitting Library.
I think it will look like a large box, with some donated yarn, some donated needles, and a three-ring binder to hold some patterns and some lists of good places to go online and Dulaan flyers and how to dye with food coloring in your illicit microwave and so forth. We think it should be in the custody of a senior and passed on when she graduates with some ceremony. The house has great esprit de dorm (yes, they do like to sleep, but that wasn't what I meant), so I think the Library will remain vital even after I stop dropping in on it.
If you want to unburden yourselves of any yarn or needles or patterns, this will be a good home. I am composing a bookplate type label, and since I keep my short and circular needles in a three-ring binder full of labelled Ziplock bags, you can have a set of needles donated in the name of a loved one or something, the full college endowment experience but without the bricks and brass plaques.
Or if you have a child away from home in a communal setting you might want to endow a knitting library yourself.
5 comments:
I have some lace weight I could donate. Do they want lacey stuff?
I imagine they would love it. Some of them are seriously creative, as 'You are going to send pictures of your Monster hat to Knitty, aren't you?' So they will find something to make of it. The dorm was built in 1955 and has rather abrupt temperature changes. Send me email and I'll send you my address -- LAURAEJ at TDS dot NET.
Oh man, do I have stuff for them.
Does anyone spin?
Next time I do a purge, I'll let you know and we can arrange a drop off/pick up.
I am going to have a spinning workshop for them. I don't think any of them has a wheel, at least not the ones I have met. I don't know if the spinning session will be posted campus-wide or just in the dorm.
incidentally: THANK YOU!!!!
as a graduate of a women's college (not Smith), this sounds like a wonderful idea.
I have lots of bits and odds and ends of things (that could make a hat by itself or be combined in "learn to knit" style) and some needles that need a new home. If you send me an address they can head towards I'll gather them up. (I am horrible (absolutely horrible) at being able to get to the post office, but I'll add it to my pile of things to mail and it shouldn't take more then a week or two.)
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