It all started with a couple of friends who liked to knit.
Caption: Rugs with Love knitters Pauline Glover and Doone Winnall; and the Church of Good Shepherd at Plympton filled with blankets destined for children in care
Now 18 years later, Rugs with Love has donated 2700 blankets, mostly to children and young people in residential care with the Department for Child Protection.
Most recently it was 210 blankets to young people who live in the Enfield, Morphett Vale and Salisbury areas.
“This year we had quite a few older kids, so they were good for snuggling on the couch watching TV,” said Rugs with Love founding member Pauline Glover.
“We try to share them around – last year rugs went to Port Augusta, Whyalla and Mount Gambier.”
Rugs with Love recently conducted their 17th annual exhibition, spectacularly filling the Church of Good Shepherd at Plympton with blankets.
The blankets were then donated to DCP and a couple of other worthy causes, such as a family of Afghan refugees, palliative care patients at the Flinders Medical Centre and a nursing home at Elliston.
But it is the children in care who are the group’s main beneficiaries.
“We don’t know who the kids are,” Pauline said of the children who get the blankets. “We just hope they love them.”
Pauline, 77, a retired Professor of Midwifery at Flinders University, said Rugs with Love now had a core group of nine ferocious knitters, who meet once a month.
“We just sit around, have some ‘bubbles’, put the rugs together and chat; we support each other when we are confronted with partner deaths, sickness or other life changing events,” Pauline said.
Fellow Rugs with Love knitter Doone Winnall said she looks forward to knitting every day.
“When I get up, I have a cup of coffee and knit a few rows before breakfast.”
Pauline is equally committed.
“I knit every night while I watch TV. I even knit on the tram at meetings and always have my knitting in my bag,” she said.
Most of the material the group uses is donated, including bags of wool which periodically land on Pauline’s veranda.
“Sometimes I have no idea who leaves it there,” she said.
And while Rugs with Love is still going strong, Pauline doesn’t know how much longer the group will be able to keep on knitting.
Most members are in their 70s, and a few are in their 80s, while a couple in their 90s have recently retired.
But Pauline does realise that the group’s contribution has been enormous.
“We are a group of older women doing something fantabulous.”
If there is one regret, Pauline wishes she had kept better track of how many blankets she has personally made.
Her major job is sewing the fabric backing on each of the knitted rugs - which is a lot of sewing.
“I reckon my sewing machine’s been around Australia a couple of times,” she said.