Unusual collaboration: hats, prisoners and local children

(Chelsea Update would like to thank Kathie Gourlay for the information in this story.)

Many local children will have beautiful, warm hats this winter season due to an unusual collaboration between Faith in Action, St. Mary Catholic Church, Brooks Correctional Facility in Muskegon, and Kevin Frahm.

More than 100 hats were crocheted by men at the prison to go into backpacks that Faith in Action distributes to school children each fall.

The yarn that was used for these hats was donated by members of St. Mary Church, and Kevin Frahm transported the hats from Muskegon to Chelsea.

Here’s how this collaboration came together. Last fall, Kathie Gourlay, head of the Charity and Justice Committee at St. Mary Church heard that men at Brooks Correctional Facility crocheted hats for newborn babies.

The youth in Gourlay’s church were collecting for backpacks for homeless youth and she called John Dickerson, the program coordinator at the prison and asked if the men there could make something different, but also useful.

He agreed.

Cathy Guinan, a member of St. Mary Church Creative Crafters group, then coordinated the collection of five big boxes of donated yarn and Gourlay mailed the yarn and a half-dozen children’s hat patterns that she found on-line to the prison.

In only two months, the prisoners had crocheted 150 hats. They made use of all the different patterns, in combination with the many different colors and types of yarns, creating a nice variety.

Some hats are cute, with cat ears on the top or crocheted flowers attached. Most are quite warm, some with ear flaps or laces for tying on. The colors are beautifully combined, and even include a striped maize-and-blue hat.

It was fairly expensive to ship all that yarn to the prison. However, it was not necessary to pay the return shipping, because Frahm, owner of the Chelsea fair-trade store The Global Marketplace, makes frequent trips to Muskegon.

He kindly picked up the finished hats and brought them back to Chelsea.

So in the end, all these groups came together benefiting the children, and giving everyone who participated a sense of satisfaction.