Knitters for Obama – The Quilt
The Knitters for Obama group on Ravelry was a bright spot in all the pre-election craziness of 2008. I found the group in March, long before the Democratic Party’s nomination of Obama, and I spent hours there hoping, commiserating, dreaming, bitching, watching the debates,1 planning, and, from time to time, actually knitting.
The official scoreboard for the KFO fundraiser came in at $32,717 with contributions coming in from over 600 donors. Not bad for a bunch of little old ladies with pointy sticks, eh?
I did win a prize in the last and biggest raffle – the Knitters for Obama lap quilt. MaryAlice, a KFO member in Birmingham, Alabama, made the prize I won in the second raffle — the Obama knitting bag.2 I was so impressed by her handiwork that I put the lion’s share of my virtual raffle tickets on the quilt.3
In any event, here are pictures of the quilt. I have a set of them over on my Flickr photostream if you want a closer look.4
*****
*****
*****
*****
*****
The quilt will be an heirloom of my house. I intend to pass it on to my niece, Frances, when I’m older (i.e., older in this instance meaning dead).5
Mary Alice shared the following with me:
The airport post office is no longer open on Sundays so I sent the quilt today, via Express Mail. The clerk assured me it would be at your office by noon tomorrow. She had to take a peek and then had to take it to the back to show her friends.
She always takes my packages when I send something to the grandbabies. She and I are about the same age and were both around during the Civil Rights movement here in Birmingham 45 or so years ago. She’s black and I’m white. We were both in tears today when we finished the transaction, just thinking and talking about how excited we both are to be voting for Barack tomorrow.
I’m honored that you’ll pass the quilt on to your niece. Please make a note to tell her how much making the quilt meant to me as a white Southerner who has lived thru this momentous change. I’ve always been a Democrat and I’m especially proud to be one now.
I’m especially proud to be a Democrat right now, too,
* * * * *- Streaming video in one browser window and a KFO chatroom or forum post running in another [↩]
- A picture of the knitting bag can be found here on MaryAlice’s Flickr photostream. [↩]
- I removed the pages I had up about the raffle, but the deal was that you could purchase a “ticket” for every $5.00 you contributed to the Obama campaign. You could then allocate your tickets among the prizes — e.g., 5 tickets on the lap quilt, 3 tickets on another prize, 4 tickets on yet another prize, etc. At the end of the fundraiser, a KFO moderator did a random number generator thingie to pick the winners of each separate prize. [↩]
- They have a Creative Commons designation which permits copying, sharing, remixing, etc. for non-commericial use. [↩]
- Frances is named after my maternal grandmother, who taught me at an early age that “Democrats care about people; Republicans care about rich people.” [↩]
