Each year at Christmastime thousands of collections are started to provide gifts for needy families, but one local giving tree adds a personal touch sewn with care.
For more than two decades, the Delmar Progress Club’s Knitting Group has set up and decorated a tree at the Bethlehem Public Library filled with hats, mittens and scarves. Like many similar drives held annually at schools, businesses and non-profits, all of the winter gear is eventually donated to local charities, but this group’s tree is unique. Nearly every piece of clothing is handmade by club members throughout the year.
“I don’t know if people appreciate them more, but I think we enjoy doing it,” said club member Marge O’Brien. “This is such a friendly group, we do as much talking than anything else.”
The Delmar Progress Club was established in 1916 as a service group arm of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. Members donate their time and resources, and also hold fundraisers for local charities. There are additional subgroups within the club for those with special interests or hobbies like gardening, reading or antiquing.
The Knitting Group was started in 1984, in no small part through the work of former President Rosemary Brown. It started with 25 ladies knitting lap blankets for seniors at Good Samaritan Nursing Home. Although group membership has stayed about the same, the number of items and causes they knit for has grown.
The group still makes blankets and brings them to a number of local nursing homes, with members knitting or crocheting squares that are then put together by Brown. Other women knit baby blankets and hats that are brought to local maternity wards and all members knit and crochet hats, gloves and scarves to place on the giving tree every December.
“Right now, I have three bags filled with about 100 pieces inside each,” said Brown. The tree will be placed in the library’s lobby, with all of the pieces tied on with ribbon.
Each piece is made with extreme skill and care. Although the pieces are functional, members also work to make sure the winter wear is up-to-date fashion wise, so the work isn’t wasted.
Knitting woven into identities
Most members of the Progress Club have been knitting since they were girls as part of a family tradition passed on through generations. Sigrid Narr said she began knitting when she was just 6 years old.
“I grew up in Germany during the war and we were being evacuated to what was supposedly a safe zone,” she said. “It took us a week to get there, which would normally take five hours because all of the train tracks had been bombed, so we had to walk 10 miles to get to the next train but my mother had some yarn and some knitting needles and she taught me how to knit.”
The new hobby kept the young girl’s mind off of what was happening around her and eventually she knitted a sweater for her “dolly.” She was taught how to crochet and quilt at around the same time, so by the time she was 7 years old, Narr had learned several new and useful skills.
Other women had similar, although not quite so dramatic, stories of learning to knit at an early age from their mothers or grandmothers. Many have passed on the tradition, but simultaneously fear it is becoming a skill that is becoming lost in the younger generations.
“They just aren’t as interested,” said Joan Barron, 81, one of the oldest members of the group. “They have other things to occupy their time.”
O’Brien said she tried to teach her daughter, who wasn’t interested, but her granddaughter now knits.
More than just a club
Members of the Knitting Group are sometimes spurred to competition — depending on who you ask. O’Brien said she competes to learn the same patterns done by Narr, who most in the group agree is the best knitter. Narr disagreed, explaining O’Brien is the most talented.
“I don’t compete because I can’t compete with her,” Narr said.
Although the group is service-based and works to give back to the community, it also has a social function. Knitters meet once a month to work as a group, but also chat and catch up on each other’s lives. They attend a workshop a few times each year to learn new patterns and go out to lunch afterward.
The club as a whole puts on about two events or group meetings each week.
“It’s a wonderful way to meet other women, especially if you just retired,” said Mary DeGroff, who developed many new friendships since joining the Progress Club in 1990.
Wilma DeLucco, the club’s president, said the Progress Club has 260 members but membership is down from years past. There use to be a waiting list. In fact, Joan Barron said when she first joined in 1966, a spot only opened up when a member passed away. That’s not the case today.
“We are always looking for new members,” DeLucco said, especially since at each meeting collections are taken for the Bethlehem Food Pantry, local domestic violence shelters and the Home Energy Assistance Program for seniors. Prospective club members need two current members to sponsor them, but some activities are open to the public.
DeLucco and Brown said any women who wish to learn how to knit or crochet can attend the Knitting Group meetings on the last Friday of each month at the Bethlehem Public Library. Residents can also donate items they have knitted to the group to be given to local charities or can also donate extra yarn, knitting or crochet equipment to be put to good use.
The group’s Giving Tree will be standing at the Bethlehem Public Library from Saturday, Dec. 15, until Christmas. None of the pieces on the tree are for sale, but members said they would help teach anyone who sees a pattern they would like to learn to knit.