Knitting for the Pope and Stitching a New Beginning

Two sweet knitting stories to end your week.

First, Virginia “Ginny” Burnett of Dawsonville, Georgia, is a 92-year-old knitter and devoted churchgoer who knits for a local church’s Loving Stitches Knitting Ministry. After the blessing of some hats knit for soldiers and hospital patients, the priest jokingly said “now go home and knit one for the Pope.”

So she did. The white hat with gold cross took four days to knit and has been mailed to Pope Francis with a picture of Burnett and a written blessing.

And I’ve shared the story of Gregory Patrick before, but he’s in the news again thanks to an article on Yahoo! Makers. Patrick walked away from a job in 2010 and found he couldn’t get a new one and eventually ended up homeless. Friends helped him get yarn, a computer and a phone line and he knit and sold his first teddy bear.

Through the years he has sold enough bears and other animals to help him get back on his feet, he’s written a book about his experiences, is now selling knitting patterns, too and can be found on his blog Mad Man Knitting. So nice to see the good that can come from some needles and yarn!

[Photo by Gregory Patrick via Yahoo! Makers.]

Looking for more Knitting patterns for Teddy Bears? Check it out here.

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One great thing to knit when the weather is warm (or honestly any other time) is dishcloths and washcloths. They are fun and easy projects and a great way to play with new skills. Pretty washcloths make cleaning a tiny bit more fun, and they’re great to have on hand as a quick addition to a store-bought gift.

The Daisy Delight Dishcloth from Yarnspirations is a fun one for using leftover bits of green in your cotton yarn stash. What looks like the bottom in the picture is actually the left side as you knit it, and each little color section is worked with its own ball of yarn, intarsia style.

That’s a little fiddly for a washcloth, but the effect is cute, and it’s a simple way to learn the basics of intarsia knitting (as well as reading a chart) if you don’t already have those skills.

One the knitting is done, you add the flowers with a bit of lazy daisy embroidery, which is really easy to do even if you’re not that into embroidery. You could also potentially add flowers in duplicate stitch if you’d rather.

This may be the most work you’ve put into a dishcloth, but isn’t it adorable? It would be fun to use as a hand towel through the spring and summer, and if you already have some leftover green yarn from other projects it should be pretty easy to do.

You could also take this same concept and make it different colors. All dark green stems with stars on top might be reminiscent of Christmas trees, or brown with daisy stitch on top in different colors could be trees in the fall.

However you stitch it, this looks like a fun little project for knitters who are comfortable with intarsia and reading charts or who are ready to try those skills.

You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations.

[Photo: Yarnspirations]

Book Review – Dishcloths for Special Days [Knitting]

Book Review – Holiday Knit Dishcloths

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