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Season’s Greetings

 

 

It is probably not snowing with you, so here is a little snowman you can quickly knit yourself.

Materials
A small quantity of white yarn
A small quantity of a contrasting colour
A small quantity of black yarn
3.75mm needles
Sewing needle
Method
Using white, cast on 16 stitches
Purl 2 rows
Starting with a knit row stocking stitch 12 rows.
Leaving a long length cut white yarn.
Change to contrast colour and stocking stitch 3 rows.

 

 

 

 

 

Following images above for guidance

K1 *insert the left needle under the thread between the needles from front to back, knit
into the back of the picked up stitch, K1 (repeat from * to end of row) (31 stitches)
Starting with a purl row stocking stitch 3 rows.
K1 *k2tog, k1, K2tog, K1 (repeat from * to end of row) (21 stitches)
Starting with a purl row stocking stitch 3 rows.
K1 * slip 1, K2tog, psso, K1 (repeat from * to end of row) (11 stitches)
Purl one row
Knit one row
P1, (P2tog 5 times) (6 stitches)
cut a long length of yarn and thread through remaining 6 stitches and pull up tightly.
Finishing
Using the black thread, at the centre of your work, just below the contrast colour hat, stitch the features you would like on your snowman.
Working on the right side of your work, using the contrasting thread where you pulled it up tightly, use mattress stitch to sew the hat of your snowman. Using the long tail of white yarn, use mattress stitch to sew the snowman closed.
Weave in any long ends of yarn and trim off the excess.
Optional, use a length of the contrasting yarn to tie a scarf around your snowman’s neck.

We hope you enjoy playing with your snowman finger puppet.

All Wrapped Up

We have fantastic knitters who make bits and pieces for the Rosie Hospital.

The Rosie have 500 deliveries a month and the clothes, blankets and bonding squares go home with the babies.

 

 

The small bonding squares for NICU are between 2″ square and 6″, “We put them in our expressing packs that are given to the mother’s on admission. I can honestly tell you what a wonderful treasure they are! They enable the mother to feel that she is actively helping her baby.”

The Rosie uses a traffic light system of rating babies red, amber or green to identify which babies need closer observations.

One way of helping to identify which baby is in which category is to use different coloured hats. So we would be really pleased if your knitters could work on making red, amber and green hats! In terms of sizes we are wanting hats for full term newborn babies, so head circumference between 32cm and 38cm would be about right, or between orange and grapefruit size. The hats can be all one colour, stripy, with or without bobbles, as long as they are obviously red, orange or green as the main colour.

“Any shade of green and yellow or orange, as long as you can look at the hat and tell which category that baby is in. We get through 250 green hats and 150 of both red and orange each month, so as many as possible!”

Other items that are in constant use are cot  size (30cm x 60cm) knitted blankets, cardigans, plain white hats, cannula covers and knitted breasts for the breastfeeding counsellors.

 

“Thank you so much for your help, we really appreciate it.”

“Very many thanks to all of your wonderful ladies, who really are making a huge difference to these families.”

The Rosie can always use knitted garments and blankets, in both the neonatal unit and postnatal ward.


We have several more requests for funding, so any donations will be gratefully received. All the money raised goes to the Rosie. We can always use any offers of help and new volunteers to support our work. Just contact us on friendsoftherosie@gmail.com

Are You Sitting Comfortably?

At our 2024 AGM our previous Chair of several decades, Mary Sanders, retired as did Ann Laskey, who had led the Rosie Tea Bar volunteers for many years. Sadly this Tea Bar, which was in Clinic 21, has not reopened since the Pandemic, due to a lack of volunteers. Luckily, there is a WRVS café on the ground floor of the Rosie.

Our new Chair is Mary Ferguson who has worked at the Rosie for many years and so knows the staff and understands the workings of the Rosie. She is already proving invaluable as she liaises with various departments, who have suggested items they would like the Friends of the Rosie to buy.

This year, we have already agreed to buy recliner chairs at a cost of over £10,000 both for the partners of women having Caesareans and for the proposed new Bereavement rooms.

 


We have several more requests for funding, so any donations will be gratefully received. All the money raised goes to the Rosie. We can always use any offers of help and new volunteers to support our work. Just contact us on friendsoftherosie@gmail.com