Last week Kathreen, Whipup’s fearless leader, forwarded the contributors a link to the Knit a River project. Knit a River is a project started by a group in the UK that hopes to raise awareness of the millions of people around the world who live without toilets and clean water. The Knit people are asking that supporters knit a 15 cmx15cm square in blue yarn and mail it to them. They will attach all of the squares to create a knitted river which will serve as a petition.

I had an inexpensive skein of leftover blue yarn and my husband and I had planned to watch a DVD last weekend so I thought I’d whip up a square while I watched the movie. The DVD was Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. The movie chronicles how a group of greedy executives destroyed one of the biggest companies in the US as well as the lives of their employees and investors. Humanity at its worst.

The irony of knitting a square to protest the need for clean water sources while watching a movie about men who squandered billions of dollars hit me about 2 minutes into it. I finished the square before the movie ended and have been thinking throughout the weekend about how much easier it was to watch the executives’ nefarious exploits while making something, however small, for a good cause.

Even something as small as knitting a 6” square can be a transformative experience. I keep thinking that if I had thought it through, I would have made a party of it. Not Stitch and Bitch party but rather Stitch for Charity to Try to Remain Optimistic in a Screwed Up World party. I’m a child of the 60s and I’m taking my idealism to the grave.

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