Keeping Neighbors in Stitches
The Catawba Crafters spread warmth and goodwill by creating handmade items for those in need.
In the small community of Mountain View, North Carolina, 15 to 20 people gather twice a week to crochet. Some of them make wheelchair shawls and lap afghans for the elderly, others craft “fiddle blankets” and palm protectors for Alzheimer’s patients, and still more crochet tiny hats for premature babies in neonatal intensive care units.
Whether at the grocery store that makes space for them on Friday afternoons or a nursing home on Monday nights, this group of committed friends meets to create a variety of useful items, only to give them away.
Just three people attended the first meeting of the Catawba Crafters, but the group has grown considerably since its inception in 2013, thanks to its founders’ passion for helping others.
Jo Boone and her mother, Earlene Propst, began crocheting caps for the homeless more than 30 years ago. They donated the hats to local shelters, handed them out on the street, and even bagged them and slung them on tree branches for people to find.
When Earlene’s Alzheimer’s advanced to the point where she could no longer crochet, Jo felt she had to find a way to continue the practice. “I couldn’t let the homeless and the shelters down,” she says. So she and her friend Dee Counter-Griffis began the Catawba Crafters, inviting others to join their efforts.
Most of the yarn the group uses is donated, and monetary gifts are spent on reflective yarn, which they use to adorn hats for the homeless to make them more visible at night.
“Without the kindness of others, we wouldn’t be able to help those in need,” Jo says.
From the start, Jo and Dee’s mission was to help any local person they could. To date, the Catawba Crafters have donated more than 9,300 items, and they expect to exceed 10,000 soon. And all of this is in a town with a population of just 3,552.
No matter where they gather, all are welcome to join and learn from the group. Jo and the others will happily teach crocheting to anyone who wants to learn; in return they ask that the items their students make be donated to local charities. As Dee says, not only is it fun and productive to get together and craft, it also feels good to give.