Shawls of Comfort
South Liverpool Knitting People Together
We would like to thank Anna who made beautiful shawls for our parents. The shawls are given 'to wrap you in comfort and to assure you of the prayers and best wishes of all of us who love you. May you always know yourself surrounded by care, support and love'.
It was Ron on the ‘phone. Our mutual friend Christine had just been in touch with very sad news. Her daughter’s first baby had been stillborn. Ron knew about the comfort shawls we knit and crochet and asked for one for Christine’s daughter. I had a lovely light green shawl with a rainbow effect in the yarn already made, so I packed it up with a sympathy card made on my pc and posted it to Christine.
Christine did send a brief message saying “thank-you” for the shawl but I was so pleased eighteen months or so later to hear that a live baby had been born to her daughter. Without anyone asking me I packed up another shawl for mother and baby and posted it off to Christine. When I saw her some time later she was of course so happy about her grandchild. “But you know what” Christine told me “the first shawl you sent for my daughter was on the back of the couch or round her shoulders all through that pregnancy – and it was still there when I went with the new shawl” When Christine’s daughter nursed her baby, she was able to arrange the shawl around her shoulders – and discreetly around the feeding baby.
I learned about comfort shawls, prayer shawls, friendship shawls or Shawl Ministry, through a small piece in “Simply Knitting” magazine three or more years ago. You can google it yourself on www.shawlministry.com, or www.friendshipshawls.org, to read about the origins of making and giving comfort shawls. It was started by two women in the USA, Janet Bristow and Victoria Cole Galo, when they were at a seminary, and has grown and spread since then. Writer Debbie McComber also set up the second site for shawl makers who aren’t necessarily in faith communities.
The first shawl I made was for Melanie,the mother of 11 year old Rhys Jones who was tragically shot dead in Liverpool in August 2007. Since then the members of three Knit & Natter Groups in south Liverpool have made and given dozens of shawls to people who have been bereaved, people having difficult surgery or treatment, or whose relatives are ill or dying, as well as to new mothers and babies and to mothers who have lost children. We have given them through church ministers, Police Family Liaison Officers, District Nurses, friends and family. Shawls are always given, never bought, though sometimes friends and relatives offer us a welcome donation towards more yarn or buy and give us yarn as a “thank you”. We also appeal for and are given lots of spare yarn which we use for shawls and for warm clothes and blankets which go to several charities at home and abroad.
After we had an article about our groups in “Simply Knitting” magazine no 46, I had quite a few phone calls including one from a lady whose niece had just suffered a stillbirth in New Zealand. “I didn’t know what to do for her” she said “then I read your article and just got my yarn and needles out and started knitting”. Shawls like this are mailed around the world and mean so much to the recipient when they arrive. They simply say, “you are not forgotten – you are never alone”. People understand them – “it’s like a big hug” they say.
We had to get back to Christine again – she lives in the Lake District and when Derek Bird shot all those people on his shooting spree I packed up every shawl I could find and the knee rugs waiting to go to Kosovo (we could always make more) and took three big bags of shawls and rugs up to Christine in Kendal, from where they were passed on to the vicar of Egremont, another mutual friend. She gave them out to people who had seen the shootings and later to families. (Within a week the ladies of Egremont were asking for patterns as well!)
Some knitters in Barrow-in-Furness also took shawls to Whitehaven, major scene of the shooting. I posted two shawls to the doctor in the little village of Seascale, who reported in a shocked voice on tv that two four-year-olds had seen the shootings there. I didn’t know the girls’ names but I included a little card addressed “to a brave girl”. A few days later I received “thank-you” mail from the doctor’s surgery and from the local school, who had been given the shawls to pass on. Two months later I received a beautiful card from “the brave girl, M.... E....... aged 4” written in her own round and wobbly writing.
This card joins the many “thank-you” cards we have received from all kinds of recipients. Just think for a moment what a positive and creative thing it would be for a mother or mother-in-law, aunt or grandma, to knit or crochet a lovely shawl for a woman who has suffered repeated miscarriages, a stillbirth or neo-natal death, to comfort her and assure her of their love and prayers, and to give her courage especially if she embarks on another pregnancy.
You can find easy free shawl patterns on the two websites mentioned above, on Knitting Patterns Central or Crochet Patterns Central (google them) or by contacting me on briganna@hotmail.co.uk. I will be happy to come and give an illustrated talk about comfort shawls and Shawl Ministry anywhere in the UK.
Our Knit & Natter groups have responded to the recent appeal by Oxfordshire Sands in two UK Knitting Magazines by making Memory Blankets for Liverpool SANDS – but we have also provided shawls for some of the mums and they have proved very welcome. At present we are working on more! We are inviting knitters and crocheters everywhere to join in and let hurting people know they are loved and cared for especially when times are very sad.
anna briggs
Knitting People Together
