KasSnippets - June 2015
REPORTS FROM SOUTH AFRICA
by Ronda Lowrie
DISTRIBUTIONS GALORE !
It goes without saying that most of our distributions take place just prior to, and during winter. As a result, we have been holding back on reporting on distributions to ensure that we have “visual candy” to share with you all year around. However, this means that our grey matter works overtime to recall the details of each distribution even though we write up the details as the distributions take place. But, more importantly the ability to convey the love and care we experience on each and every distribution, is diluted.
SO, a change in reporting modus operandi is needed!!
Kamohelo Day Care Centre – 30 July 2014
This was a husband and wife run day care centre and it was so encouraging to see the love and dedication this couple has for the children.
Full Report : Distributions Galore !
Previous Reports : A Buzz of Activity in South Africa
MED-LEMON
NAVY BLUE SCARF CHALLENGE
update from Wendy Hardy
Hi all. Just wanted to let you all know how grateful we are for the navy blue scarves you have sent us thus far. The Knitting Schools are also going very well and we have trained just over 120 people so far - half way to meeting our target!. It is so heart warming to see people learning a new skill and enjoying themselves - BIG smiles all around! The Knitting Schools continue until the end of September and we would like to encourage you all to continue knitting navy blue scarves until the end of September. We realise that we will only receive these scarves many months after September, but we will continue to distribute them all. We are planning another distribution of the scarves in July and will be sure to share some photos with you. We hope that this distribution will also be covered by the Expresso TV programme too!
This video features scarves being distributed to school children, and Ronda being interviewed in the office surrounded by the team and squares!
Features the trainees learning and knitting, plus interviews with Wendy and Sister Sito. Three trainees also give interviews, including the lovely Paulina who was so proud to receive her Certificate!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFhtDtGfddM
KNIT-A-SQUARE FINANCE
Pay the Office Rent for a Day
The Pay the Office Rent posted on March 25, is still working its magic and members have managed to cover 16 days of June.
Christine Chiplen and Grace Weir formed two lovely team of KasSisters who helped pay to celebrate their birthday's on 19th June and 4th July respectively!
A number of other members birthdays were celebrated, including husbands & sons; several anon days were purchased and Mili celebrated Slovenia's and Croatia's Day of Independence on 25th June; Knit for Life contributed 2 days rent raised through EasyFundraising to commemorate a special lady whose collection of 210 Beanie Babies is being sent to South Africa!
READING BOOKS
By donating $5 to Knit-A-Square South Africa, you will enable us to purchase a set of three, age appropriate books for the orphaned and vulnerable children we support in the many informal settlements we visit.
Link to Reading Books in the KAS Shop
Roz Goodwin posted in her blog this month about the
Little Libraries - Cape Town
Visit their Facebook page : https://www.facebook.com/Littlelibraries?fref=ts
As a result of reading about Little Libraries, Roz was inspired to visit the Knit-a-Square Shop in order to purchase some Reading Books!
To read more go to Roz's Blog
KAS REACHES GREAT HEIGHTS
FOR CHILDREN
WE DID IT!
Our 201st target - Table Mountain - Cape Town - South Africa
178,000 squares = 5,085 blankets!
[We would have probably have finished in April if it wasn't for the postal strike, followed by a go-slow!]
To see the cheers in the final stages, please click : here !
This is not the time to put one's feet up, and the next challenge is already in place! After that exhausting climb, Linda Maltby has created a more relaxing route for us to travel along!
KNIT-A-SQUARE DELIVERS !
After a long, and very successful, trek to the top of Table Mountain
we can now relax and take a leisurely ride with the KASvan.
We’ll travel from the Bryanston Post Office to the Knit-a-Square Office.
~~~~
The distance is 5.3 km/3.29 miles
or
26,500 squares
How quickly can we travel ?
Will we putt along or zoom right to the Office !
250 squares = 100 metres/328 feet
To see how far the KasVan travels during the challenge, and, to add your squares to the total : please click here
WHAT'S GOING ON IN SOUTH AFRICA?
SORTED IN SOUTH AFRICA
- THE OFFICE
See more pics : here
DISTRIBUTION PHOTOGRAPHS
Link to recent photographs
Mama Ntombi Community Projects
Thank you to Coffeeberry Cafe for the donation of hot dogs and burgers for the poor children at Ezinketheni. What a treat this was for 450 children!! Thank you also to Debi, Solomon and Sandra who cooked the meat patties and made up the Burgers and Hot Dogs.
Also the Educational Programme is continuing : Thanks to Katherine's innovative ideas the children and grannies had so much fun with playdough and macaroni sticks. Even our 84 year old Volunteer, Solveig had a whale of a time as she made up stories for the child sitting next to her. Then came hand washing and cupcake treat.
To read more please click here
JAM INTERNATIONAL
A team from Germany have completed another wonderful 'extreme' makeover, this time Lesedi ECD - a place that Knit-a-Square distributed to a couple of years ago!
To read more please click here
SPREADING THE WORD,
MEMBERS & GROUP NEWS
AUSTRALIAN SHEEP & WOOL SHOW
Sandy McDonald co-founder of Knit-a-Square.com has been appointed an ambassador for The Women in Wool organisation and has been invited to speak on the Friday 17th July at the event taking place at the Australian Sheep & Wool Show.
Sandy will be giving a 10-minute presentation about Knit-a-Square and the completion of our recent challenge - KAS Reaches Great Heights for Child - explaining who the worldwide membership rose to the challenge and in doing so, produced enough squares to create over 5,000 blankets!
To learn more about the event go to The Women of Wool, also visit Women of Wool on the menu bar!
News from As Fiandeiras - Brazil
Founded in February 2014 by Claudia De Lara Samways, who took her inspiration from the work of Knit-a-Square. Whilst they differ in that they supply the elderly in need as well as children, they have gone from strength to strength and now have 480 followers on Facebook.
We report from time-to-time on these wonderful ladies on the Facebook discussion page, but do visit their Facebook page and see the wonderful photographs of their work and the people they help.
FB Link : https://www.facebook.com/pages/As-Fiandeiras/1471211486432241
This month quite a few 'gatherings' and 'meetings' have been taking place amongst the Knit-a-Square worldwide membership! Also, some groups met to celebrate
World Wide Knit in Public Day
Linda Maltby (Canada) met up in The Netherlands with Anneke and naturally they just had to visit a special yarn shop!
Meanwhile in Canada!
Christine Steeves, Wendy Lewis, Andrea Palmatier, Anne Powell, Gloria Grandy (Anne Connor wasn't able to join us as she was away for the weekend). Gloria's wonderfully patient husband, Don, was here too but found mall-wandering preferable to crocheting.
For the whole story, delightful video and all the photographs, also Gloria posted pics of her meeting with our Jeanne, and, Val (Bev's sister) who lives in British Columbia, Canada and is a forum member.
Still in Canada
River John Square Knitters
A Knit-in-Public Day event
Please click here for more photographs and a full report
Knit-a-Square Melton Mowbray (UK)
were featured on the Melton Times website!
Rebecca has also been instrumental in arranging postage sponsorship from a local company BH Shoes, here is their Michelle Morgan with parcels containing April & May's squares ready for posting! [Brilliant work Rebecca!]
THE BLANKET ROOM COLLECTION !
Put together by Christine Johnson
This month 24 pages of blankets have been added, the first batch, including the one above are from the Chiawelo Gogos. They have developed their own innate sense of design.
THEME OF THE MONTH
JUNE 2015 - STITCHTASTIC STITCHES, STRIPES & ZIGZAGS
lead by Pam Antink
We have seen some amazing and varied contributions this month, and, it was great to see members continuing to provide PJs with just a little extra twist still following on from May!
and here are some of the June much needed hats & hand-warmers and other goodies!
JULY - Christmas - Glorious Greens & Reds - Debbie Posmontier and Sue Gillman
AUGUST - "Flags - the international KAS community" - Heather Mensah
SEPTEMBER - Fabulous Faces - Smiley faces, Animal & People faces - Robin Monsees
OCTOBER - Grannies & Garters - Susan Donaldson
NOVEMBER - Oceans/Land/Sky/Space - Valerie Zalewski supported by Linda Maltby
DECEMBER - Year End UFOs, Stash Busters, Plain Janes, Easy Peezies and other Favorites - Susan Haines
TALLY or ITEM COUNT NEWS
by Linda Maltby
THE MAY SQUARES LIST IS AVAILABLE.
Visit www.knit-a-square.com
Click on “Received Squares”
Updated Graphs are available HERE.
This is the second highest total for squares this year ! A special thank you to the small team of volunteers who open and sort through the mountain of parcels that arrive each week.
SQUARES: 18 827 [537 blankets]
JULY PATTERN OF THE MONTH
by Linda Maltby
Happy Scrappy Doll – a sewing pattern
by Anne Scott (UK)
A change of pace from making squares !
For those of you who like to sew, the Happy Scrappy Doll is a wonderful way to brighten a child’s life.
The beauty of this doll is that it can be made from scraps of material.
Please consider making a doll for a boy as well as a girl.
All children need a special friend to provide comfort and help them cope with their world.
Then have fun designing a companion for a lonely child.
Choosing material with a brown skin tone will reflect the appearance of ‘our’ children.
The children appreciate receiving dolls that look like them.
The pattern instructions and doll pieces are available HERE.
Other toy patterns are available
in the
SQUARE HEART OF THE MONTH AWARD
edited this month by Gloria Grandy
THE SQUARE HEART AWARD FOR JUNE 2015 IS FOR
TOM & SANDRA SKUPHAM, UK
Those who don’t follow the UK Group may not know this lovely couple. Those who do, know they are kind, caring, and helpful participants in this group.
Tom tells us: "I learnt to knit in the 50's when I was off school with measles. Now at 60+ I do my knitting at nights while watching the TV ..."
Tom and Sandra have been contributing to Knit-a-Square since the beginning … 2009!!! As one of our moderators says, “They seem to be like Duracell bunnies ... the kind of who people who joined up and have just kept going ever since.”
To give you an idea, here are a few excerpts from some of their comments.
~~ Hi all. Sandra and I sent a parcel yesterday to SA containing 20 squares, six readymade toys, and one colouring book …
~~ Sandra & I have today sent 18 squares, 2 cuddly toys, one small Football, 3 beanies, and one pair of mittens …
To read the rest of the award : please click here
KAS FACEBOOK PAGE
QUESTION ?
Are you frustrated by your iPad and its limitation on the forum ???
Well, help may be here !!
Two of our Mods,Christine Chiplen and Linda Maltby, have been exploring a browser called “Puffin”.
Puffin will make it easier for you to post on the forum. When using Puffin, the toolbar appears above the reply box which allows you to use bold or underline as well as other options. The big advantage is being able to add photos to a discussion!
Puffin is a free browser.
Puffin turns your screen from this:
Into this:
Puffin should also work on iPhones and Android devices.
A few tips:
- Add text to the box before uploading the photo.
- Once in the box, move down a few lines before adding text. This means you are able to re-enter the text area to make corrections without the need to delete your whole comment.
We hope you are as delighted as we are with this new browser.
It makes iPad use so much easier.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Photographs from weather reports from one side of South Africa to the other!
Kwa-Zulu Natal
Sutherland North Cape
Let us hope that the flowers will blossom again soon in
South Africa and all the places where children are cold and hungry!
Replies
What an incredible report Pam and a great new challenge Linda, brilliant. The map of the world full of flowers reminds me of this community, blooming bright and beautiful.
Thank you, Pam, for another great edition of KAS Snippets.
And thank you, Christine and Linda, for finding the Puffin browser for the iPad users. It sound like it'll be very helpful.
Marvellous report Pam, it is great to see what is achieved in a month. So much I could comment on but I did notice the more than 5000 blankets that have been achieved by the Great Heights challenge. That is a wonderful achievement.
May I say how honoured I am to be part of the KAS storybooks for creches drive. As a retired library assistant, I have strong views on the importance of story and picture books to small children. Not only as preparation for school, but to foster imagination and 'travels in the mind'. To increase in this way the quality of life for children is a privilege. The cuddly toys also provide imaginative play value, so important for a child's development and happiness.
When I was still working, I used to do Storytimes in the library. I had a 'magic story carpet' which was a 6 ft x 4ft blanket made up of brightly coloured knitted squares [strange isn't it how things come full circle?]. All the kids had to sit on the magic story carpet, if there wasn't enough room for them all the ones without a space had to hold on tight to the edge, in case they missed the 'flight'. Stories can take a child anywhere they like, loads of fun.
A local pub once had a family apple day with different varieties of apple to try and a wooden juicer for people to juice their own apples. I was asked to tell apple related stories to the children for half an hour as part of the days entertainment. Well, when I started the kids were either very young and shy or the older ones too cool to listen to stories. They couldn't get far enough away from me. After ten minutes the young ones were all sitting cross legged at my feet and the cool dudes were leaning over the back of the chair reading over my shoulder.
Of course I still read Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer occaisionally to have MY preferred flights of fancy!
It would be really nice if KAS could get enough 'book money' from the KAS shop to give each creche visited a dozen [or even twenty] new story and picture books as well as paper and crayons [also essential to happiness].
Oh, and could I just say, "Another lovely report, many thanks".......x
Thanks Roz! Just to let you know that Ronda has sent Sian (her daughter) and Vonnie who live in Cape Town the link to Little Libraries and Camille!
Thanks Roz, it was really useful to be able to include the link to Little Libraries - so many of the creche's we visit are pre-school children from very destitute areas. To be able to provide a link to see the difference books make to the lives is children is very useful.
As you say above, to foster the imagination really kicks starts some children! My own love of reading wasn't kick-started until I heard Sir David Attenborough pronounce words I'd never heard before such as 'paradise' and 'lagoon' in one of his 1955 TV Nature programmes - we didn't have a TV, but visited our Nan every Sunday who did! Result - I joined a library! It helped that he had such a silky smooth voice, it has become a bit gravelly with age - he is still my all-time hero!
When his brother Richard Attenborough died, it made big news. When he goes, it will be a day of national mourning. And my first reading book that I remember was Peter Pan and Wendy. I always wanted to live in Wendy's House.......
See good to see Anneke and Linda together amongst the yarn. I wondered why you had gone to the Netherlands Linda!
Sandy will be speaking at the Woman in Wool luncheon where Tassie's own Nan Bray will be speaking about her sheep and wool. Some of you will recall the soft 15 micron White Gum Wool that Nan donated to me for knitting for the children.
It will be great for the two power ladies to meet.
Thank you for the comprehensive snippets Pam.
Thank you Pam for another very informative report. Heart warming news for us all and the 'snow photos' further enouragement for us to continue our efforts to keep the children warm.
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