Breien x Boterham x Charities

Matching the theme at Villa Elise "Bring your own cake or cookies", we were visited by the reporters of "De Boterham". This is a newspaper created for and by students learning Dutch as a second language here in Ostend. In order to launch some mutually beneficial activities, Julia (a knitter!), Mariella (soon to be a knitter!) and Petra (still has to finish a scarf started 20 years ago) interviewed us and took pictures.

The resulting article can be admired at De Boterham and here's an extract:

Houd je alles voor jezelf of geef je jouw breiwerk cadeau aan anderen?

Het hangt ervan af. Sommige mensen breien alleen voor zichzelf en anderen maken graag een cadeautje. Er zijn ook veel mensen in Vlaanderen die voor het goede doel breien. Ze breien dekens, en truien voor arme mensen of ze sturen breiwerk naar landen waar natuurrampen gebeuren. Na de aardbeving in Pakistan waren er allerlei zulke acties. 

Which leads me to a little shout-out for charity knitting:

• There's Jan from Hasselt who also knits in Ostend, he creates so called chemo caps for cancer patients and is always happy to receive gifts of soft cotton yarn. As patients tend to have very sensitive skin, this is really the best material to donate.
• Then there are De Breimadammen, a group of knitters from all over Flanders who knit for various causes and have their own site: Breimadammen. One of them lives close to Ostend and will certainly join us again in 2013.
• Just yesterday I came across Zonnedekens, knitting, crocheting and patchworking for children in the hospitals of Ghent.

So, if you have yarn or time (or both!) to spare, you know where to turn to.

Last meeting of the year...

Believe it or not, but last Sunday was the last meeting of the year. It's hard to believe that another year is almost over... time flies! It's been a year of great fun, heartfelt friendship, delicious cakes, superlative beers and wonderful projects. We've loved going to Stoffenhuis Paulette, our KIP day in the park was amazing (thanks Rebecca and Rozemie!) so all that remains to be said is here's to an even more colourful, fun and glorious 2013!

I promise to blog more too (with apologies for the decline in the number of posts these past few months). Dates for the first quarter of 2013 are on the dates/hours page and on our Facebook page. Plus there are lots of new opportunities to knit in the Droge Coo - hope to see you there soon.