About eight years ago Ellen Pisor, Sally Booth and Patty Shea invited a group of friends who liked to knit to get together on a Wednesday afternoon. Everyone enjoyed the shared activity—so much so that since then we have met as a group every other Wednesday at the home of one of the group members. Over the years these regular get-to-gethers have become a time set aside to knit, to exchange creative ideas for our knitting, to learn new techniques from each other, and, of course, to talk about anything and everything under the sun.
When some years ago Share Care asked for a donation of knitted items for a fundraiser, a new dimension was brought to our group’s activity. Now knitting and selling the knitted items to benefit worthwhile projects in our community added a much greater incentive to knit more and to create new items more likely to sell. The name “Wednesday Knitters” identifying our group was then attached to all hand-knitted items for sale.
Following our knitting efforts for Share Care, we then knitted and sold our creations to benefit the Leland Township Library’s renovation and then the addition to the Old Art Building in Leland. With these two building projects completed, Fishtown Preservation became the next natural cause for our knitting group. All of us knitters easily agreed that to help preserve Fishtown also meant to help preserve the health of all of Leelanau County, a place we all love. We are proud to have been able to contribute at least ten thousand dollars so far to projects in our community and to donate items not sold to other organizations for their use.
Current members of our knitting group are: Merry Ball, Sally Booth, Sherrie Hardie, Saida Malarney, Ann Nichols, Ellen Pisor, Ebba Raynor, Patty Shea, Kathie Snedeker, Nancy Tefertiller and Trudy Underhill