About Us
Close Knit Hugs came about due to many people's horror and helplessness during the Hurricane Katrina and Rita disasters in the United States. Watching people pick through wreckage for one small memento of their lives and family histories, we felt their sense of loss and also wondered how "new heirlooms " might be created.
My cousin, Mary beth Voss, and I brainstormed and remembered an old Girl Scout project we participated in as children as well as the lessons our grandmother, a Red Cross Knitting Instructor in WWII, taught us. The Girl Scout project was knitting squares for the Red Cross who had volunteers assemble them into blankets to be distributed to victims during disasters. We reasoned that, with our e-mail contacts, the huge amount of leftover yarn in our homes and lots of work, we could do the same.
We also wanted to target the groups of persons who were on fixed incomes or who just couldn't write a check to help the relief efforts. We conjectured that, if 1000 people each sent us a square, we could piece together about 30 blankets. We could involve as many people as wanted to knit or crochet a square, empowering them as community activists. So we began.
Combining our professions (I am an online English instructor and my cousin, a photographer and graphic artist), we designed a website, gathered materials to post to the website, e-mailed all our contacts and started knitting. Before too long, I couldn't knit anymore because I was piecing blankets together. Since late September, we have sent monthly shipments to the Gulf States and currently work with the Blankets for the Gulf project.
The hurricane victims need to know the global community is behind them and will be during the rebuilding process, which experts predict will take ten years. The Gulf States will be rebuilt. With the character and flavor of homemade blankets, "new heirlooms" from Close Knit Hugs and other organizations like ours, these new towns will become homes for the people of the Gulf States.
Maggie Tatum, December 2005.