The Yarnit Group welcomes those willing to contribute time or supplies for a good cause.
By: Leon Tovey
MONROE "If you can count, you can crochet," Elaine Versak said Monday.
And if you can crochet or knit, or do any other kind of needlework the Yarnit Group would welcome you, she continued.
And if you can’t do any of those things, but want to learn, the group would still welcome you, she added.
And even if you don’t want to learn if you just have a little bit of yarn laying around that you want to get rid of, or would like to help out a good cause in some way the group still wouldn’t mind if you dropped by one of its weekly meetings at the township Senior Center.
The Yarnit Group has been knitting and crocheting blankets, hats, sweaters, scarves, shawls and just about everything else that can be knitted or crocheted for area churches, charitable organizations or just friends and acquaintances for the past seven years, Ms. Versak said.
The group, which currently has about 25 members, meets each Monday from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Senior Center to talk shop and trade stitches.
Ms. Versak, the Greenbriar at Whittingham resident who founded the group, oversees the work and offers advice, along with Ethel Erlich of Clearbrook and Sydell Fox of Rossmoor, two of the group’s acknowledged knitting masters.
"This is a little tight," Ms. Versak told a group member at one point during Monday’s meeting, tugging on a narrow strip of crocheted material the first few rows of an afghan the woman had started on. "See? This row’s nice and loose; it should all be like that."
The woman murmured in agreement and began ripping up the proto-afghan to start again.
Ms. Versak is the group’s acknowledged crocheting expert ("That’s Ethel and Sydell’s department," she said) and if her quality-control methods seem a bit severe, one has to remember that the finished product is for a good cause.
For the past year, the Yarnit Group has been giving much of its finished product to Audrey Schwartz, another Greenbriar resident who is the regional coordinator for Project Linus, a national nonprofit group that provides blankets, quilts and afghans to children who are seriously ill, traumatized or otherwise in need.
Ms. Schwartz said Wednesday that the Yarnit Group has become one of her most steady suppliers, sending her six to nine afghans every month.
"They make them like they’re making them for their own children," she said.
Ms. Schwartz said many of the blankets she receives not only from the Yarnit Group, but from other area groups and individuals as well go to children’s cancer wards at area hospitals, among them Beth Israel Medical Center in Newark and Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick.
It is for this reason that the Yarnit Group takes such a strong position on quality, Ms. Versak said.
"Well, that and because we’ve been doing it for a long time," she added, noting that she, much like Ms. Erlich, Ms. Fox and many of the group’s other members, were Depression-era children who learned to knit and crochet the way kids today learn to use personal computers.
But she pointed out that all the experience in the world is useless for making afghans if one doesn’t have yarn. Many of the group’s projects can be nicely put together from leftover skeins of yarn and Ms. Schwartz, though the Linus Project, does provide the group with yarn when they need it, but they could always use more, Ms. Versak said.
"People bring us stuff and we appreciate it as long as it’s clean and new," she said. "My husband gets very annoyed because the back seat of my car looks like a yarn store, but I tell him I can never have enough."
For more information or to donate yarn to the Yarnit Group, contact Ms. Versak at (609) 409-6065. Those wishing to make a donation of a blanket, yarn or money to Project Linus can contact Ms. Schwartz by phone at (609) 860-6364 or by e-mail at [email protected].

