Peace blanket

I had an unexpected email from someone I do not know recently. In it R.... told me how she had found a book in a charity shop. The book contains a story by me. 

It is the true story of how I knitted the above "blanket". I made it after "9/11" or the appalling destruction of the World Trade Centre. It is "cot blanket" size but, after a suggestion from the Senior Cat, I turned it into something which could be hung on a wall and there it is, not on my wall but on a wall somewhere else. Let me explain.

My "Little Sister", the mother of my goddaughter, was living in New York at the time. Her husband might easily have been in the WTC at the time. I was desperately worried for her, her family and everyone else caught up in the event. I knew people here who were equally concerned for people they knew. 

This was one of those major but rare events where I was not busy at work trying to help those people who really help. Nobody needed any communication assistance. It was all happening in a place where English was spoken. That alone made it almost unbelievable.

The Senior Cat retreated to his beloved shed. He couldn't handle the situation at all. He ceased watching the evening news service and never watched it again. I had to watch of course but I kept my watching to a bare minimum. I needed a project, something to take my thoughts in a positive direction. 

And so I set out to knit the above blanket. I had to design it first and I wanted to involve other people. I put out a request for people to give me their words for "peace". Yes, I could easily have found them for myself. There were more than enough dictionaries in the house at the time but I wanted to involve other people. I did involve other people.

I deliberately used blue and white - the colours of the Israeli flag. I also used the Blissymbol for "peace".  It is a combination symbol of "opposite" and "war". If you look carefully at the photograph above you can see the crossed swords which mean "war" next to the symbol for "opposite".  The man who created that symbol, Charles Bliss, was a former prisoner of war. 

I knitted that blanket on buses and trains and in many other places. When people asked me what I was making I told them. I asked them to add stitches to it. The youngest was a boy of about three, the oldest was a very old woman indeed. I remember a bus driver putting in stitches, a priest, a boy with purple hair and many others. Those who could knit would often put in more than one stitch in the plain or simple rounds.

When I had finished it off it went on display at a small museum, at a craft fair and then at the local library. The library raffled it off. A local woman won it and hung it in her own home until she moved and no longer had room for it. She contacted me and asked me to use it again. Yes, it is somewhere else now, on another wall. I hope the people who have it can feel the concern that so many people put into it. 

(The book is "KnitLit:Sweaters and their stories" by Linda Roghaar and Molly Wolf. ‎ Harmony; 1st edition (2002) 

 ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0609808249 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0609808)