Bolivian Knitters Help Heal Hearts

The indigenous Aymara women of Bolivia have knitting as part of their heritage, but now they are able to use old skills in a new way by helping make medical devices to save the lives of children born with holes in their hearts.

The device, known as Nit Occlud, was designed by Franz Freudenthal, a cardiologist in La Paz. It looks like a little top hat knit out of wire and can be made in different sizes to block a hole in the heart.

It’s made of nitinol, a nickel-titanium alloy, and can be collapsed and inserted into the body through a catheter. It’s only expanded when it gets where it needs to go, making the procedure minimally invasive and inexpensive, which is a must in Bolivia, the poorest nation in South America and a place without enough cardiac doctors to treat kids with heart problems, which can also be more serious in the high altitudes.

It takes about two hours working in a clean room to knit a device, and knitter Daniela Mendoza told the BBC she’s glad to be able to help.

“We are very happy, we are doing something for someone so they can live,” she said.

[Photo via BBC.]

For the past few years I’ve taken part in a Christmas in July blog hop that encourages people to get a jump on their making for holiday gifts.

I love to use yarn I already have for these projects in the hope that people will consider what they already have that they can use to make projects for themselves or to give as gifts.

This year it was a couple of knit baskets made using partial balls of yarn left in my stash from other projects.

They use the same basic pattern but the first one is made with two colors of bulky yarn, and the second used two strands of worsted weight yarn held together, which made the gauge about the same, but I cast on fewer stitches to make a smaller version.

The bottom of the basket is square, though you can make them rectangular if you’d rather. Then I just knit up the sides in rounds until I was about to run out of yarn. This gave both baskets rather short sides — maybe more like a tray than a basket — but you can keep knitting as long as you like to make the sides of your basket as tall as you want.

They’re worked in seed stitch, which keeps the edges from curling and adds a nice texture to the baskets.

Of course this also allows you to use even more odd balls from your stash. I’d love to make a big one someday combining lots of different yarn. I mean, I’d probably use it to store more yarn, but that’s a fine thing to do.

As it is, these little trays are great for sitting on your desk or bedside table to hold little things that always seem to appear there. I like to use one to hold the supplies for whatever project I’m working on, things like little scissors, my tape measure, a crochet hook, etc.

And they would make good gifts on their own or as a container to hold some other goodies if you like.

You can find the free pattern for these stash busting baskets over at Our Daily Craft.

Have you read?