The Knit Before Christmas

We in the Christmas Room are literally as busy as Santa’s elves, packing gifts and finishing knits.  So far we have packed 6,730 gifts for seafarers and shipped 4,252 gifts to be distributed to mariners working on the America’s rivers.

Any knitted garments or handmade Christmas cards received by December 19 will be distributed during Christmas 2007.  SCI Chaplains will be delivering gifts through the Epiphany. The first gifts of the year have already made it onto vessels:

That’s SCI Chaplain Deacon Jacques Girard (our Santa Claus) in the middle.

Happy Knitting all!

Hello knitters,

As of today, we have 12,898 gifts in house for mariners! That’s a huge number, but it is 3,602 items short of our goal. If you’ve got the time and yarn to knit one or two more items, we can certainly use them.

All items being received now are immediately packed into gift bags and boxed up  If you are in lower Manhattan please stop by and visit the Christmas room!

Happy Stitching!

Jeanette

Written for The Knit Before Christmas by Whipstick Knitter,  Catalina

The Whipstick Knitters are members of a larger Internet group called The Gunroom which is devoted to discussing the novels of Patrick O’Brian, the era in which they take place, and, as we say, "everything else."

The formation of our litttle group grew out of a lively discussion of knitting in the novels. Casting about for a name which would be both nautical and knitty, the whipstaff of a ship which is a vertical steering stick attached to the tiller a deck below was changed to Whipstick to make us sound handy with our needles. Our motto, "Which it will be ready when it is ready!" is borrowed from Jack Aubrey’s grumpy but devoted manservant, Killick, and is intended to put pressure on no one.

Columbus Day (in honor of another mariner) was chosen as the date to upend our seabags for muster and shake out our finished projects, mailing them to one member located in New York who then made the delivery accompanied by another (non-knitting) Gunroom member seen holding a copy of O’Brian’s HMS Surprise, the third novel in the series in the photo. We had decided on a goal of 21 knitted items, as there are 21 books in the Aubrey/Maturin canon, including an unfinished one. Having met our goal earlier this year, we did a further volley, as it were, or a second read-through with two to spare, submitting 44 items in all.

We currently number 13 Whipsticks from all different states and maintain an internet sub-list for our knitting activities which includes knitting for other charities and our own projects. Most of us have never met one another, only one knitter having actually come face to face with two others but on separate occasions and one of those with a sister in the group. In spite of that, and in the best tradition of Jack Aubrey’s delight in a pun, we are a close-knit group!

The log of our progress (and more photos!) may be more closely followed at the Whipstick Knitters’ Blog.

If you or your knitting group would like to write a guest entry, please do!