Hats for Honduras

I needed to take a moment to update folks on the situation with Hats for Honduras at this point.

In mid-September, we moved out of the Loaves and Fishes Catholic Worker – due to a lot of unresolved conflict that I won’t drudge up. Currently, I’m the only one knitting hats, and because of the move, the change in life, and the time putting a lot of life back together, Hats for Honduras is in a kind of “holding pattern” for right now.

This is probably a very natural occurance in many small ventures like this. A few people drop away, someone moves, life gets a little crazy, and you have to regroup the essentials before you piece back the other things.

Also, since the uprisings in Honduras, we’ve not heard from Henry. I’m sure he’s ok, but it might take some time before we make contact again.

So, for now, I’m going to be changing around the website a bit so that everything up to now is accurate. I’m also going to be exploring some alternatives for either selling the hats, or finding an organization to donate proceeds to, should I have to put off travel plans to Honduras for a while.

Send your positive thoughts to Henry, the Honduran people, the project, and me. Also, stay tuned, as things could change in the next month as well.

Peace to you all,
Scott Schumacher

Many of you are probably already aware of the coup taking place in Honduras, where sitting president Zeleya was ousted by military force and from the presidential palace, and flown to Costa Rica.

I want to encourage everyone to read as much as they can about this current crisis from as many different sources as you can. There are some intricacies that the US mainstream press don’t generally report, so it’s good to have more breadth in your sources.

One of the places I go to for news in English for Honduras is here:

http://www.hondurasnews.com/

Some things that are happening now from their perspective from their “ground zero” locally:

• The new sitting president, Roberto Micheletti, has issued a nation-wide curfew between 9pm and 6am Sunday and Monday.
• Zelaya has been flown to Nicaragua with the assistance of the Venezuelan government.
• Two of the military leaders of the coup are graduates or have trained at  the US taxpayer funded Army School of the Americas (SOA), which has a tainted history of its graduates leading massacres, targeting union organizers, and committing human rights atrocities in Latin America.  More info here:  http://www.soaw.org/
• An emergency meeting with the UN is scheduled for Monday around this issue.

While the focus of Hats for Honduras is not one of politics, I did want to give folks some other news sources to look to so they can be more informed of what the people of Honduras might be facing.

I’m hoping to call our friend Henry in the morning to see how he is doing in the midst of this crisis in Honduras.

Spring seemed to have brought a lot of challenges both personally and collectively for our little community of Loaves and Fishes. Life can get really out of control and busy.

I became so incredibly busy with my web design business, and I’ve had to learn the art of scheduling all over again!

One of our knitters has now moved into her own apartment after living at Loaves and Fishes for the last 8 months. Her newly found independence is filled with both joy and challenges. But, as she was moving, she gave me a really large bag filled with beautiful hats! This gives me even more hope for gearing up this fall to start selling hats!

Amy will also be heading out to Colorado for about five months at the end of July to learn a lot about dog training from a friend, as well as begin a whirlwind “Permaculture Site Tour” of her own design, in preparation for more of her future ideas. So, for a while, we’re probably down by one knitter.

I also want to thank the folks who have been donating yarn! You are all so wonderful! Summer isn’t really the time when people think about yarn, crafts, or comfy-fuzzy hats to keep their ears warm in Winter. So the donations in the middle of Summer have been wonderful!

Maybe it’s a natural feeling that everyone has who takes a journey like this. Right in the middle you maybe hit a bump, and you look back and say, “What happened since then?”

This past weekend I finished another child’s hat, and began making friendship bracelets out of smaller yarn pieces, and I became much more at peace with progress. We have about 50 hats at the moment, a bunch of friendship bracelets, and I’ve got a nice cupboard full of yarn, just waiting for me!

We’re still making hats! Plans are in the works for an Etsy account, as well as booths at upcoming events and fall Farmers’ Markets in Duluth. Our Facebook Causes Group has over 50 followers and growing too. There’s still plenty of time to knit and prepare!

Thank you to everyone for supporting Hats for Honduras thus far!

Not too long ago, Amy and I came back from a craft retreat in Iowa, where not only did we shop for yarn at thrift stores, we received THREE boxes of yarn!

Many thanks go to Irene from Champaign, IL, and Cheryl from Owatanna, MN!  And of course MANY MANY thanks to Amy for her keen eye for thrift-store finds of yarn!

We now have SIX huge tubs of yarn, sorted by color!

If you’d like to donate yarn to our cause, we can “rescue” it for you!  No yarn is too drab, too dull, or too “eccentric” as we say.  There’s a hat for everyone.

Go to our Donate page to find out where to send that unwanted yarn that’s been sitting in your closets and craft rooms for ages!  No yarn will be turned away!

¡Muchas gracias!

Welcome to Hats for Honduras and thank you for reading our blog! 

Almost immediately after our friend, Henry, left to go back home to Honduras, this project began.  While gathering to see photos of Henry in Florida, proudly wearing a knitted hat given to him by Kristina, we had a very simple brainstorm.

“Hats for Honduras!  That sounds like a fun way to raise money for us to visit him.”

And after that statement, we started to really think that maybe we really could do it!  We could make hats for people in order to raise money to visit him.  Maybe it could become a lot more than just us visiting.  Maybe someone else from Honduras could come back to Duluth.  Maybe we could start some kind of friendship exchange.  Hmmm…

So, I knew we needed a website, so I emailed the hosting company that I always use for my own work designing sites for clients.  I told them the story of Henry and how he affected our lives.

Within just a few hours, I received word from Tiger Technologies that they would donate the domain name and hosting fees for this site!

Within a week, we accumulated six boxes of yarn from area thrift stores and donations!

And now, me, who’s never knitted in his life, obtained a hat loom, and have made FIVE knitted hats!  (Photos will be coming soon!)

We’re so excited to share our thoughts on Henry, the impact his friendship made upon us, how we’re doing learning new skills in crafting, and our progress to getting ourselves to Honduras by 2010!

We hope you’ll keep reading, and will “come along” for this journey!

Peace,
Scott Schumacher