Nelson Mandela Day

 

Its celebrated in South Africa with the call to make things better. Some people commit to volunteering for 67 minutes (the length of years of public service Mandela gave). I shall continue to crochet squares for one of the 500 children who are orphaned by AIDS in Southern Africa every day. If you are a crafter and have some stash do think of doing one. Info here. All you need to do is make an 8 ” square crochet/knitted/loomed with a 18 inch tail to help sewing and post it out there. If you live in Edinburgh contact me I’m happy to post out squares. Above is a blanket sewn up with 30 or so squares I sent to SA in the last month.

Wanted Bobby’s Blanket

sketch by the Edinburgh Sketcher

After our adventures putting up Bobby’s blanket on Friday morning and displaying the square anaconda we were really gratified by the response to our event. We got coverage in blogs and even The Herald newspaper! However the last sighting of Bobby’s blanket was at 11pm on Friday by a Granny Greener who made a special detour to check on it. Now it may be warming the neck of a student or even a rugby fan who got a bit over enthusiastic over Friday night… but today there has been snow and hail in Edinburgh. Bobby looks distinctly cold. Please return his blanket. If you are too short to append it back around him, please pass to the staff at the Red Squirrel Bar on Lothian Road and we can pick it up when we next meet.

craftivism at Greyfriars Bobby for AIDS orphans

 

513  8″ squares made by Granny Greens for Knit-A-Square in South Africa. This will make 15 blankets for AIDS orphans. I also made a small mini blanket for Greyfriars Bobby so he could stand in solidarity as a cainine orphan. It was gratifying to have lots of questions from passerby’s and know that our work was going to photoalbums in Japan and Italy amongst others. Better photos will be along soon. We managed to show that we’d made the height of Bobby and some more in squares but I was manhandling the crocheted ‘ananconda’ so unable to take photos at that point!