Like many Westporters, last week you hung your stocking by the chimney with care.
But no matter how carefully Maria de Palma, Anne Faber, Diane Lowman, Ellie Herman and Harriet Vandis tried, they could not do the same.
Their stocking is 139 feet tall, and 74 feet wide. It weighs 1,600 pounds. The Guinness folks confirmed: It’s the world’s largest.
The world’s largest stocking. (Cramer Gallimore Photography for Caron United)
Anne, Diane, Ellie and Harriet live here. Their stocking is in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Well, technically it’s not their stocking. It belongs to 1,100 others too — and Caron United.
Over a year ago — on Veterans Day 2014 — the yarn manufacturer asked for help creating the largest stocking in the world. Across the country, knitters and crocheters responded.
The Westport quintet — and all those others — created 3-foot-by-3-foot blankets. They sent them to Caron, which stitched them all together.
What’s the point?
Along with helping create a world record stocking, Caron contributed 15 cents for every skein of its yarn used. They also solicited donations. The result: More than $100,000 has been raised for Children of Fallen Patriots. The organization gives scholarships to kids of US military personnel killed in the line of duty.
The stocking was unrolled and displayed as part of a Christmas celebration in Fayetteville — a city best known as the home of Fort Bragg.
Diane Lowman, Anne Faber and Harriet Vandis, hard at work. Not pictured: Ellie Herman and Maria de Palma.
So where do you hang the biggest stocking in the world?
You don’t. Soon, it will be taken apart. More than 1,100 blankets will be created –then donated to military hospitals.
Maria, Anne, Diane, Ellie and Harriet belong to Knit One, Nibble One. That’s a loose-knit (ho ho ho) organizations of hundreds of Westporter women who create “healing shawls” for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. (Because the drugs are infused at a low temperature, patients often feel chilly.)
The “nibble” refers to magic-bar cookies that founder Ellen Lane bakes. She puts one in a tote bag that also holds yarn, needles and knitting directions.
The women do much more than knit, of course. For example, Anne is a champion rower, while Diane runs yoga workshops.
So as you stow those Christmas stockings, be thankful they fit in a box in the attic.
And be thankful too for talented, creative and caring women like Westport’s own Maria de Palma, Ellie Herman, Anne Faber, Diane Lowman and Harriet Vandis.
