Last week I knit a jumper for AKWAK - Australian's Knitting For War Affected Kids, who are my current knitting charity of choice. They are mainly a facebook based group, although they have a Ravelry presence. Basically their volunteers knit through the year. You email to let them know what you are knitting, and occasionally they post saying they need more cowls, or jumpers for a certain age group or whatever. Then at a certain point they call for the donations to be sent in. Someone packs them up, puts them in a container and they get shipped to Syrian refugees living in camps in (I think) Afghanistan. I knit for them because I think it is a worthy cause, but also because they want 80 percent or more wool in garments, and since that's what most of my left-overs are, it works well.
This jumper was really fun: I started it as a raglan, but as soon as I joined the body and sleeves I decided I wanted to make it a round yoke. Also I ran out of the green contrast colour, and used some random handspun for the collar - which I decided to make a turtleneck at the very last minute.
The final day for receiving packages is 31 August, so after I blocked this jumper I packed up the rest of my contributions (4 hats, 2 cowls, 3 baby jumpers, a pair of mitts) and sent them off. I only started knitting for AKWAK in January, so that's not a bad start. I just fit into the large mailing bag. Next shipment I will have a full 12 months of left-over knitting to send, so I imagine it will be quite a bit more, maybe I'll even be able to fill an extra large bag.
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