The hands of 99-year-old Joyce Yeo gently work yarn around knitting needles and she laughs as she shares, “I don’t knit as quickly now, I used to be able to knit a 10-inch square a day!”
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Her pace has slowed but with each stitch Joyce knows she is creating a blanket that will give warmth to someone in need of comfort and kindness.
Every Wednesday she travels from her home at Bishop Tyrrell Place in Cundletown to sit in Harrington Library with a group of women to knit blankets for ‘Wrap With Love’ and Taree Women’s Refuge. The friendships nurtured while knitting have enriched Joyce’s life over the last five years and this week the group gathered on June 28 to celebrate Joyce’s 99th birthday.
Joyce describes the women in the knitting group as family – “they have all been so good to me.” It is literally a circle of friends that forms to sit in the library to knit 25cm x 25cm squares. There is laughter and there is tension – in the knitting and sometimes in the friendships.
Joyce fondly recalls her late friend, Mary Cranny, who tried to teach her to crochet.
“Mary said, ‘Joyce you should do crochet because the squares grow quicker’. She kept on about it and then said, ‘I’ll teach you’. People used to watch us and laugh, because she was around 90 and I was 94, but I just couldn’t get my tension right and one day Mary said, ‘It’s your tension Joyce! It’s your tension!’
“I let her tell me off several times about my tension but one day she picked the wrong day and I said, ‘I’m not bloody-well crocheting anymore Mary!’ and so I’ve stuck with knitting,” Joyce laughs. “I knew I could knit better than I could crochet.”
Joyce laughs a lot, talks freely and fondly about her friends and says the reality of being 99-years-old “seems to have hit me all of a sudden.”
“I’m very thankful I can continue to give. I’ve always enjoyed giving to people rather than receiving. I think that’s why I love knitting, I just seem to relax and it is charity work.
“It’s lovely to know my squares make blankets that are needed in our community and all over the world.”