Published: February 21, 2007 12:30 pm         

BLOGGING FOR BLANKETS: Local writer unites nations with knitting project to aid Orleans Habitat for Humanity families

Internet blogging, knitting and Orleans Habitat for Humanity may not seem to have a lot in common, but those three things put together mean warmth and well wishes for families in need.

“It’s wonderful how knitters are so generous and it’s wonderful how they answer the call to so many charity programs,” Habitat board member Jackie Fleckenstein said.

Fleckenstein of Waterport, writing under the pseudonym “firefly,” started her Internet blog less than a year ago with a focus on the simplicity of country living and knitting projects. Blogs are a kind of diary, but published on the Internet for anyone to read.

Now the site has had nearly a quarter of a million hits and knitters across America, and from far-off countries like Denmark and Wales, have joined Project Gracious Parcels and donated 7-inch squares for blankets to keep Habitat families warm because of the blogger with a passion for stitchery.

“I found it on Jackie’s blog and I had been reading her regularly when that came up,” Carol McDermott of Florida said.

Fleckenstein read about the Warm Up America! Foundation, an organization that collects and distributes knitted items, and from there she decided she would collect her own squares to help others in the community with Project Gracious Parcels. After promoting Gracious Parcels on her site and receiving an overwhelming amount of support, the project has been very gratifying, Fleckenstein said.

“It’s just a neat way to reach out to our families,” Chapter President Kay VanNostrand said. “It lets them know that there are people not only in Orleans County but around the world thinking of them.”

So far one 49-piece blanket has been completed and will be given to a Habitat family. However, she has enough squares for at least two more blankets as more parcels continue to show up in the mailbox, Fleckenstein said. Each parcel comes with a tag listing the type of material, who made it and where they are from.

“She’s doing quite a nice service and I’m just amazed when I go to the post office and so many have come in,” VanNostrand said. “I picked up one not too long ago, a package from Hawaii.”

According to Fleckenstein, some people have taken up knitting just so they can participate in the project while other experienced knitters are so ambitious about the project that they have committed to making more than just a few squares to contribute.

“I understand that some people are so excited about it that they want to contribute a whole blanket,” Habitat board member David Miller said.

According to Fleckenstein, there are a couple of women in Europe who are in the process of completing their own blankets which will then be sent to the organization for a family moving into a new Habitat home in the spring.

Each of the pieces Fleckenstein receives follow a color scheme, traditionally the colors of rural America with greens, golds and browns.

“I wanted to make it more creative so I gave them photographs and asked them to think about a rural area and choose a color and a stitch pattern that would represent that,” she said.

By giving her readers an idea of what Western New York looks like throughout the year, knitters have taken the landscape and turned it into colorful blankets that represent home for the people receiving them.

“I get a feel for it from reading her blog,” McDermott said. “It actually sent me running to my local yarn shop.”

McDermott, the blog reader, lived in Pennsylvania prior to moving to the sunshine state 30 years ago and remembers how it looked, so when she went to the yarn shop to find the colors she wanted she imagined the shades of green grass, golden wheat and the colors of fallen leaves, she said. For the first blanket McDermott knitted five squares and has since committed to knitting one square a month for future blankets.

“The parcels represent parcels of land and since this is a rural area I wanted it to have a significance in this area,” Fleckenstein said.

Contact Miranda Vagg at (585) 798-1400, Ext. 2225.