Women knit dolls for kids in Cuba

The Craft Club at St. Timothy, Agincourt is a group of ladies who meet every Tuesday morning to create hand-crafted items to sell at their annual Christmas event, or to donate for outreach.

Our most recent project was the production of 415 knitted “comfort dolls” for outreach. The son of one of the group’s members went on his fifth trip to Cuba in early April. The people whom he visits are extremely poor and are very grateful for his friendship and the items that have been donated for them. This year, at one of the events he attended, 300 children were present.

Around Christmastime, when he asked his mom if she could make some knitted dolls to be given to the children, she said she could perhaps manage to make 70 at most. When another member of the Craft Club heard about his request for dolls, she told the group, which agreed to join in the project.

Since early January, our Tuesday mornings have been a lovely time of fellowship, with flying fingers and the click of busy knitting needles to the accompaniment of warm, friendly chatting. While some of us knit dolls, others stitched facial features on ones that had already been finished. Most of the knitters were St. Timothy’s parishioners, but there were also several friends and neighbours of members as well. We were very grateful for everyone’s contributions to this project.

Since we surpassed the original target of 300 dolls to be given at the children’s event, the extras were also donated to give to other children whom he might encounter while in Cuba.

On March 18, all the dolls were taken to the 10 a.m. service, where they were the subject of the Children’s Talk and were blessed by the Rev. Andrea Christensen, St. Timothy’s incumbent, before beginning their journey to new homes and families in Cuba.

Submitted by Anne Baillargeon, a member of St. Timothy’s Craft Club