The route to a good deed

17 February 2006

Tabard

From Christina’s post about her night out, I went via the comments to Rebecca’s site, where I read her post about knitting things for the Dulaan Project to keep people in Mongolia warm.

As I’m a total child, who always wants what someone else has, or to be doing what they are doing, my thoughts immediately flitted to knitting something too. I can’t do anything fancy, I can just knit, that’s it. So I went to my bootiful wooden chest full of exciting bits of wool and material and chose two balls of wool and some big fat needles that Debbie gave me some time ago.

I’d intended to make a scarf, but as I knitted the rows, it became clear that I’d made it far too wide to be a scarf. Then Mum came up with the wise idea of making it into a tabard. I knitted and knitted and knitted and just two days later, I was casting off and sewing it up. It was quite a feeling of excitement as I realised that I’d be able to take the finished garment to show the girls at Zizzi’s. When I’d first picked up the needles, I thought I’d only have a bit of scarf to show them by then.

Scarf

The knitting bug had taken firm hold of me, so when I returned from Suzy’s that night, I cast on once more with the same wool to make a scarf. I finished that last night, complete with little tassles for the receiving kid to suck upon, chew and ingest.

Now, I’ve moved onto finally finishing the blanket I started many yonks ago. It’s made of different coloured patches that will be sewn together and then edged with a previous length of french knitting. The patches were started during my previous bout of knitting glee, but when I realised that I didn’t have a use for the blanket, I kind of lost interest in finishing it. I’m very fickle, you see. But now I have a purpose: keeping the Mongolians warm.

The Dulaan Project is about knitting hats, scarves, jumpers and whatnot for the impoverished and homeless in Mongolia, where temperatures fall much lower than I would want to experience. I’m delighted to finally have something/someone to knit for, delighted to be doing a good deed and to have something concrete to do this year. For whatever reason, I’d been feeling rather lost since the beginning of the year, not knowing quite where I was headed.

Mum is knitting some things for the Dulaan project too, as she can actually knit properly. Hey, she can even do purl! I tried to teach myself that from her book last week, but soon decided it was stupid and gave up. I’ll have to be taught by a person rather than a dubious drawing. Our deadline for sending our goodies to the organisers in America is Mum’s half term holiday at the end of May. In other words, the week before I leave for my Galapagos trip with Suzy. It’ll be interesting to see how long my interest in this survives – and whether or not I’ve learned purl by then…

Posted in: crafty minx

Comments

One Response to “The route to a good deed”

Anyone would think I had nothing else to do : dreamdust
14th September 2011 @ 1:03 pm

[...] happens when I make scarves too wide, don’t we? That’s right, they become tabards! The other tabard was made by folding the wide piece in half widthways, stitching one side seam and sewing the [...]