When knitting is more than just ... well, knitting

When the SUAS Knitting Club was set up almost four and a half years ago, their members probably couldn't have envisaged that they would become known as far away as Palestine, writes Brian Byrne.

But they are. And that's just one of the highlights of what has become a very close-knit (ouch!) group of women who meet in Kilcullen Parish Centre every Tuesday to knit, teach, learn and simply have a nice time together.

"It was set up by the parish pastoral worker we had at the time, Hannah Evans," says Nancy Fitzpatrick, who has been there since the beginning. "It was part of an outreach programme which Hanna was doing, an initiative from a Positive Ageing Information event at the time."

Though a number of ideas came out of that programme, it's possible that the one which has developed best is the SUAS group. The kick-start to the group was given by Eva Kavanagh, who was their first tutor. Not that nobody could knit, but many of the first members might not have worked at the craft for many years.

Fairly early on, they found that doing individual pieces like hats and gloves and jumpers weren't quite enough challenge, and just about a year out from the group's foundation, they handed over to the Parish Centre a knitted tapestry, representing a church stained glass window and a garden outside it, with details of flowers and birds. The various components were made by individual members of SUAS, and included more than 180 individual knitted 'bricks'.



At the time, Eva Kavanagh said it was designed to represent a community 'doing many small things to make something big'. The 7'x4.5' tapestry was also an exercise of a piece being done 'in the blind' because none of the ten women involved were shown any picture to guide what they were doing.



During the following year, after a presentation by Transition Year students from Kilcullen's Cross & Passion College about the difficulties faced by young mothers in Palestine because of the Israeli blockade, they did a project providing knitted caps and clothing for new-born babies in a maternity hospital in Bethlehem, which were delivered by the Order of Malta working in the area both to the hospital and to an outreach group working with mothers and babies outside the city. In fact, Hanna Evans had also triggered the CPC students' interest, organising a Social Justice Group for their work towards John Paul II Awards.

In their Kilcullen context, the next major SUAS project was a knitted Nativity Scene which was unveiled in the Parish Centre at Christmas 2012, and which was again a feature of the decorations this past Christmas. The group also raised money in a Pancake Morning for the National Children's Hospital.

And for this year, back clickety-clicking again for 2014, their project is a large knitted bunting which can be used at parish events.

"We're open to new members all the time," says Nancy, who emphasises that participants can be any age, and there's no requirement for skilled knitting. "It's really a lovely social occasion every week, and we're in a grand place in the Parish Centre, where we can have a cup of tea and a chat as well as knit."

This article was first published on the Kilcullen Page of the Kildare Nationalist.