Desiree DeCoste
Beaver Staff
Now in their seventh year of supplying hats, mittens, scarves and gift cards for Christmas hampers through the Tamworth District Lions Club, The Knitting Elves are still hard at work and looking for donations.
The Knitting Elves, which was started by Brenda Mayhew, consists of about 22 women who knit and crochet items to either be donated or sold to purchase gift cards for the Christmas hampers.
“This is our seventh year of doing this and the ladies make anything knitted or crocheted,” Mayhew stated. “Some of it I sell and with the money from the proceeds of the sales I buy $20 gift cards from Walmart and we donate them to the Lions to put in their Christmas hampers as well. In total we’re pretty close to $17,000 that we’ve raised so far for the Lions in seven years.”
The gift cards go towards the teenagers and adults who receive the Christmas hampers as they don’t get a present, only the younger children.
“We supply the gift cards for the teenagers and the adults so they get a gift,” expressed Mayhew. “We also supply mittens, hats, possibly scarves for the ladies because the children can’t have them and we also supply mittens and hats for three of the schools for children that come to school without mittens and hats.”
The Knitting elves are always on the lookout for more crocheters/knitters as well as any yarn donations people may have.
“We’re looking for yarn donations,” Mayhew said to The Beaver. “And what I do with that is either sell it or we meet once a year in October and the ladies bring their stuff and some of the women can’t afford to buy yarn so I usually take a big bin of yarn and they can pick out yarn to make stuff for the next year. We are looking for yarn donations as well as any craft donations that somebody would make and they want to donate. They can contact me from my website or they can phone me at my phone number and we can arrange a meeting or they can drop it off.”
For more information on donating or becoming part of The Knitting Elves please visit https://www.theknittingelves.org/ or email knittingelves@gmail.com or call 613-354-9906.