A Little Yarn for giving

Candy Puterbaugh

50plus Magazine

Many years ago, a Hungarian nun showed kindness to a lonely, sickly three-year-old child at a Philadelphia orphanage. Beckoning the little girl to the bench where she sat crocheting, she placed her hook and yarn into the tiny hands, guiding them with her own. Little did the nun know that, 70 years later, those once-tiny hands would crochet and gift almost 500 colorful afghans to people around the world.

“I just want to crochet!” says Carmelene Melanie Siani. “I absolutely love it, creating out of old yarn and feeling the colors and textures slide through my hands. I can sit and crochet every day and stack afghans up to my ceiling, or I can give them to the world! I call it the ‘Free to a Good Home Afghan Club.’”

It began when Carmelene made an afghan for one of her three daughters and posted a photo on her Facebook page. A friend saw it and asked to buy one.

“I told her all she had to do was buy the yarn,” Carmelene says. “ I’ve been in business twice before and didn’t want to turn my afghan-making passion into a business. Since that time seven years ago, people I’ve made afghans for have sent me their leftover/stashed/what-was-I-thinking yarns — boxes and boxes of them! Or they’ve bought yarn for me. It fills half my garage!”

People have also sent her money to buy yarn for others’ afghans or to cover postage for those who can’t afford it. In all these years, Carmelene says she’s never been taken advantage of.

“When you sell crafts for money, the recipient wants everything

just so — size, color, etcetera,” she says. “When you give them away, people are so polite: ‘Would you mind using this color?’ It brings out the best in people, and involves honesty, ethics, responsibility and generosity instead of money.”

When people ask Carmelene for an afghan, they often have  special reasons. Here are a few:

My mother just died and left a closetful of yarn. Could you turn it into an afghan to remember her by?

My only son enlisted in the Marines and is leaving home.

My little girl was killed in a bombing. I need a red afghan to wrap myself up in when I think of her.

My best friend has breast cancer.

Can you make me a pink afghan? I’m a single mom whose husband just died of brain cancer. Now I’ve been diagnosed with breast cancer.

My son was the first gay man to be legally married in his state. Can you make me a gay pride afghan?

“That young man wrote and thanked me,” Carmelene smiles.

“I have a stack of thank-you notes three inches high. People want an afghan made out of generosity and love. It doesn’t matter to me why someone asks. What matters to me is when they ask, I respond. Many women crochet for a cause — the homeless, nursing homes. I don’t ask their story or reason. All they have to do is ask.”

Carmelene has a story of her own. She didn’t “find herself” until she was in her sixties. “Most of my life I was depressed and unhappy. I had a miserable time growing up and was sick a lot. I came into my own with a lot of therapy and a lot of energy!”

She did find a creative outlet while in high school. She entered a short story contest, believing she could write as well as a past winner. Indeed, she won first place, but afterward, her creative fire cooled. Then, in her sixties, her second husband told her she was an artist and should create instead of sitting around. So, she began.

“We all need someone to call us out,” she says. “Until then, no one ever said I was an artist. My husband opened the door and gave me courage.”

Carmelene made and sold rag rugs, something she learned at age 10 from her brother’s babysitter. In the ensuing years she learned and worked at many things, including managing volunteers at a hospital, opening an antique store, painting, modeling for artists, singing and playing cocktail piano, and transcribing police interviews.

She also published online for about 10 years. This included posting stories on The Ethel Circle Facebook group, which has a large following. Overwhelming response to those posts spurred her to create a more intimate, closed group of her own last spring.

Now, every day, while listening to non-fiction audio books, she crochets a nun’s kindness into her afghans. Each takes about a week to make. They go to folks everywhere — Belgium, New Zealand, England, Canada, Scotland, Ireland, South Africa and the US. There are 48 people on her wait list.

“I’m embarrassed when people say I’m a wonderful, giving person!” she laughs. “Giving away afghans doesn’t make me a giving person — everyone has the impulse to give. I’m a regular, everyday person who happens to be creative.”

Carmelene currently has enough supplies, postage, and requests for afghans to keep her busy for the next 10 years. She asks that readers please not contact her or send supplies, money, postage, or request an afghan. Perhaps next decade!

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Note: In case you wondered, yes: this is the Carmelene, who authored “Popcorn,” “Who, Me in a Senior Yoga Class?” and other great stories in 50plus­ — the editor