If you think that only significant donations are important and if you want to help you should be purchasing tons of humanitarian aid, here is a story of the cutest charity organization called «An Eyelet of Good» («Петелька добра»). They adopted this name because they knit for the children of the internally displaced Ukrainians and proved that even a small ball of thread can make a huge difference.
We had a great interview with the representatives of this community of masters about the power of knitting, how it helps calm the nerves, how to help others while doing what you really love to do, and why toys are more important than war.
Evacuation with a few balls of thread: Kateryna
At the end of the winter, many people were forced to leave their homes grabbing only a few most valuable items with them. Kateryna Haydukevich, a founder of «An Eyelet of Good», took only a few essential items for herself and her child, knitting needles and a few balls of knitting threads.
The woman is originally from Mykolayiv, and when the war started she was forced to leave her native city and move with her son to the Kirovograd region. Kateryna is a professional knitter. For her, knitting is both her favorite hobby and the way she makes money.
«Knitting is just like meditation for me,» says Katerina. «It’s like you’re knitting your thoughts on the knitting needles and they leave your head. And it feels so much better.»
When Kateryna settled down a little in a new place, she understood that she wanted to help other people who were also affected by the war. As she found herself so far away from her native city she decided to help with what she can do best – knitting and communicating with people.
That was how the idea was born, and now this idea turned into a charity organization «An Eyelet of Good». They still don’t have an official status but they are planning to work on it in the nearest future. Right now this is a volunteer community that operates daily to help other people.
Kateryna focused on helping children as she witnessed every day how difficult it was for her own son to deal with the realities of war. All she needed to do at this point was find other master knitters who would support her idea to knit Torys and clothes for children.
The craftswomen found Kateryna pretty quickly. Kateryna posted in a few knitting groups online and over 100 people responded to her post within the first three days, and all of them were ready to start working! Kateryna created a Telegram group where she added talented master knitters. They started getting to know each other better and working together. A lot of them were ready to help right away. Some of them didn’t actually know how to knit but they still wanted to help and would be buying threads or sending donations.
So «An Eyelet of Good» started its operation, and now they produce clothes and toys for babies and toddlers and for children up to 6 years old. Every master knits what she enjoys the most, and nobody is trying to limit creativity in the group. So the items they produce are also different and include little hats, sweaters, and toys.
The project started its operation on 5 May, just when the first master knitters responded to Kateryna’s call. There were a few coordinators as well who would communicate with the group participants, gather the items, and distribute them. Kateryna’s task was to find volunteers who would accept and distribute the knitted items. She says they decided to not work directly with the parents but to focus on producing the items. She is looking for volunteers she would trust, then she talks with them, looks whether they report about their work, and only then does «An Eyelet of Good» work with them and sends their items all over Ukraine.
The first batch they gathered at the end of their first month of work consisted of over 100 items. Since the foundation of the project, they sent over 2000 clothing items and toys all over Ukraine. Children from Dnipro and the Dnipro region, from Mykolayiv, Kharkiv, Balaklia, Zaporizhzhia, Odesa, Chernihiv, and Irpin have already received their new knitted items and toys.
They are trying to consider the season too. In May they’ve been getting ready for summer and would be knitting summer hats and t-shirts, while now there are warmer hats, sweaters, and mittens. The masters also work exclusively with high-quality wool that is suitable for little kids.
«Those masters who didn’t knit toys during the summer would be working on knitting warm things, but they would keep these things with them till September. Master Tatiana is with us since the first day and she’s produced over 25 items already including sweaters and cardigans. Now we are ready to be sending these items to kinds,» says Kateryna.
Now there are around 700 people in the community. Of course, not all of them knit, but many support them with supplies, donations, or advice.
Coordinators who work with supplies, threads, and distribution of the ready items register the packages they sent out, determine how much supplies were already used by the masters and how much is still left, and decide what moments to focus on.
Kateryna says that right now their biggest issue is the delivery cost as delivery within the country isn’t cheap at the moment. Some of the packages are sent at the cost of the organization, while others are often covered by the masters or people who donate and support the community.
The woman says that she is so pleasantly surprised with the level of trust that exists within the community, as Kateryna doesn’t actually know any of the coordinators and masters in person. But she believes that every one of them will perform her tasks on the highest level and will send or accept the parcel as agreed. Now «An Eyelet of Good» has 11 administrators from different cities.
The community also fights various gender stereotypes as there are also two men among the craftsmen, — Maxym and Yegor joined the project as well and are actively contributing to it knitting children’s toys. Kathryn admits that before she founded «An Eyelet of Good» she never met men who knitted but now she can see that this activity is not only for women.
Kateryna herself doesn’t knit a lot at the moment as she is focused more on coordinating the project’s operation. She has an engineering degree but since her childhood, she was into needlework. At some point, she also worked in the shop that was selling materials for hand-made jewelry. One of Kateryna’s colleagues there knitted well, so Kateryna decided to try it as well.
Kateryna told us that the majority of the masters evacuated after the full-scale Russian invasion so now their community needs support.
«We are helping not only children but also our masters,» says Kateryna. «Many of them stopped knitting or had to leave their work instruments at home, or there were simply no orders coming. And this project is a real salvation! Many of the masters don’t even have the means to purchase the threads at the moment, yet they want to knit desperately.»
The project has already expanded beyond Ukraine. For example, some of the community’s masters live in Germany and send their items from there. One of the project’s participants who lives in Sweden regularly shares news about «An Eyelet of Good» among the people there, and people help to buy supplies and send them to Ukraine.
Some of our girls also knit for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. They knit warm socks, hats, scarves, and balaclavas. Many of them are doing this outside of the project, yet «An Eyelet of Good» still tries to support them in this initiative. For instance, wool that doesn’t suit children is often donated for making camouflage nets, etc.
Kateryna believes in this project and what’s it to keep operating as any help is important now, especially when it comes from a place of love and care.
Inna’s and Svitlana’s dreams come true
Inna Ivanova is one of the master knitters and later one of the coordinators of the project. She agreed to store the knitted items and some supplies in her toy store. However, there were so many things to store that they took up almost the entire space.
We visited the store to see what kind of items people send to Inna and to have a chat with her. The woman brought a few boxes right away and started showing us every little sweater or toy packed in the nice little boxes. She says she adores this part of her work as every parcel contains something beautiful.
The store is a common creative space for Inna and Svitlana Ivanenko, who is also a craftswoman. The women united a few years ago and opened this store to sell their own handmade items. They made everything here themselves including all the shelves. Inna knits clothes and toys and also makes jewelry from beads. Svitlana makes hand-made dolls and various stuffed animals and decorates them using textile dyes.
So this little shelter for toy rabbits, kittens, teddy bears, ponies, and llamas also became a place where items from all over Ukraine are being delivered for storage. Inna says people in the neighborhood know her very well already as she receives so many parcels all the time. Here, the friends sort through the boxes and prepare parcels for the volunteers.
Inna shows us how she receives parcels with hand-made items. Craftswomen pack every item in a separate bag or box to prevent it from damaging during transportation. They also add postcards and nice wishes.
Some of the items are given away for a charity lottery. All the profits are used to cover transportation costs and parcel delivery.
Inna has already started receiving the parcels with some winter clothes. One craftswoman sends boxes filled with warm hats regularly. One package can contain fit or so warm hats, sweaters, and socks.
While Inna shows us hers and other master’s items made for «An Eyelet of Good» she also tells us how her store operates. Inna and Svitlana both can work on their toys right here in the shop. While she was waiting she managed to knit a head for a toy rabbit that someone ordered. A little girl wanted a toy rabbit with pink eyes and a red dress. So Inna is trying to fulfill the child’s dream.
In their store, the women also host private workshops for those who would like to learn to make knitted toys. Their business also met some obstacles. Like most other small businesses, this shop also closed at the end of February, but on 16 March the women resumed the store’s operation to support the economy and each other. So they continued to knit and sell their knitted items and pay taxes.
In the beginning, they had some doubts about whether people even cared about the toys during the war, but now they see their cause is needed. Parents want to make their children happy with nice presents, even when the times are hard. However, Inna also breaks the stereotype a little bit admitting that the majority of her clients are adults and many of them buy these knitted rabbits and kittens not necessarily for their kids but for their collections.
The woman graduated with an economy and a law degree. She made a great career in the banking field before she turned 30, but then she decided to abandon this career and dedicate her efforts to craft and creativity. Since her childhood, she was into knitting and learned a lot about it. Svitlana is a professional seamstress, however, she prefers creating toys over clothes.
Inna admits that she liked Kateryna’s idea right away when she saw a message in a telegram group. So «An Eyelet of Good» became for her not only an opportunity to help others but also a new community of like-minded people. People share their experiences, discoveries, and their work in this group, as well as ask for advice and just have a nice conversation.
The craftswoman is absolutely sure that one should only make the toys one likes. She says she often feels like kissing her toys and clothing items while she works on them, so children who receive them can feel all the love, care, and warmth.
Apart from unboxing, she also likes receiving feedback from the volunteers and children who became the new owners of these knitted things.
«When we receive photos of kids with our toys we always notice that even the smallest kids, even if they’re only toddlers, are still choosing a toy that would look a little bit like them,» says Inna sharing her experiences.
Inna often feels in her store like in an aquarium: she sits there and knits, while people walk by, look into the store, and come in to check it out. She continues her work though and feels happy that she fulfilled one of her dreams — to have a small and cozy shop where people would come with joy. And now her store became home to hundreds of different items and toys for children who lost their homes due to war.
Requests from the craftswomen for children’s smiles: Iryna
Iryna Teach is from Luhansk, and now she moved to Kyiv. She experienced active war twice already. During the first days of the full-scale Russian invasion, she would sit in the hallway and knit something just to calm down. Knitting is her hobby but it was quite difficult to buy knitting threads at the end of February. So the woman felt she wanted to knit some children’s items and then find who to give them to. She was a member of many knitting groups on social media, and that was how she met Kateryna, a founder of «An Eyelet of Good». She was also the first to answer Kateryna’s call and in fact became Kateryna’s deputy and works on different organizational matters now.
She doesn’t knit a lot for the project at the moment. She says other craftswomen make it better and faster than her, so she is more focused on coordinating their work as now she is the Senior Administrator of the project. She also receives the parcels at the post office, brings them to her home, and sorts through them. Iryna is also responsible for the Instagram page of «An Eyelet of Good». She creates content for this page and familiarizes with the project and its rules all the new people who decide to join the project. She says that she receives a lot of requests from the new craftswomen who lost their homes and had to leave their cities. They ask to just give them some wool and the instruments, as they want to help as much as possible.
«There was a story,» says Iryna. «There was a girl from Mariupol, and she left the occupied city with her child. When she left she took her hand-made toys with her. She gave all these toys to the kids of our project.»
Many people get in touch with her offering to send more wool, maybe even from their own storage. She says she receives offers from abroad as well. Now there are a little bit fewer requests, as there are usually three new craftsmen or craftswomen joining the project every month now. In the beginning, these numbers were 10-15 people a day.
Many craftswomen are worried that their works may not suit the project but Iryna always calms them telling them that everyone sees and depicts the beauty in their own unique way and that every item will help children.
Everybody is always waiting for the photos of kids with their new toys. Craftswomen are usually trying to find their toys in these photos and to see a child’s smile so that they know their work is important and means a lot.
An Instagram page of «An Eyelet of Good».
