KNIT ONE PERL ONE: Betty King adding to her pile of poppies last week.
KNIT ONE PERL ONE: Betty King adding to her pile of poppies last week.
Betty King has been knitting since she was 8 years old and living on the Coromandel Peninsula. Now she's 83, and lives at Switzer Residential Care in Kaitaia, but she's still knitting, currently in support of a worthy cause.
As of last week she had produced 140 knitted poppies, andwas still turning them out, in response to the National Army Museum's 'Patriotic Call to Yarn,' commemorating the first soldiers who left New Zealand in 1914 to serve in World War I, and those who subsequently lost their lives.
Patriotic associations had been formed all over New Zealand during the war, project co-ordinator Alison Jones said, raising more than 5 million ($10 million), while countless women had got together to knit and sew items of clothing for the soldiers, from balaclavas and shirts to underwear and socks.
The call now was for 18,166 handcrafted poppies, one for every New Zealander who fell, which would be displayed at the National Army Museum in the form of a cascading waterfall. More than 1000 poppies had already been made when the project was officially launched last month, Ms Jones saying contributions may be knitted, crocheted, sewn or hand-crafted in any other way, but must be red and of the Flanders poppy style. Patterns were available at www.armymuseum.co.nz
Betty King has certainly answered the call, and shows no sign of slowing down.
"Everyone knitted in the old days," she said, but times had changed. It was a long time since she had made a fair isle jersey, but producing poppies one after the other was by no means tedious.
'The kids,' she added, had thought she was making hats for dolls when she started on the poppies, but while she had dressed plenty of dolls in her time she had given that away years ago.
