Rose Brown can’t really afford the yarn, nor the cost of sending her creations to those in need. She’s learned, however, that God will provide and He has, she says — in the gift of her hands to create and with those who help her get the supplies she needs.
Brown doesn’t sell her crocheted work. She gives it away: to hospitals and those in nursing homes, to whomever and wherever has a need.
Brown began crocheting blankets shortly after being displaced from her Aurora home after Hurricane Irene. She moved to Washington and said the hobby started when she began taking a relative to their dialysis treatments as a way to fill the time waiting. Her first blankets, she donated to the dialysis center.
“As I crochet, I know it’s time well spent because I know it will be appreciated out there,” Brown said. “I just wanted to bring joy. I felt the joy of life is to be surrounded by the warmth of the blanket.”
She soon branched out to donating her blankets to area nursing homes.
“A lot of the elderly people are cold. Some of them don’t have family members to care for them, so I wanted to share my love and be a blessing for them,” Brown explained.
United Way Executive Director Mark Hamblin met Brown when she was still living in her Aurora duplex that had severe mold issues, a result of flooding during the hurricane.
“She’s still struggling like a lot of folks,” wrote Hamblin in an email. “The interesting part of her story is her heart for others and how she’s giving back. Probably six months after the storm she told me she had some blankets she had crocheted and wanted to give them to the hospital for patients who could use them. Over the last couple of years, she has made dozens of blankets for cancer patients, newborns and others.”
Brown sees her donations not as charity, but as an extension of her faith and an opportunity to overcome the hurdles she has faced.
“If you apply yourself, you can do anything in life. I don’t care how hard it is. I don’t care the hardship that you face,” she said. “We need to look for and strive for better things in life. Things don’t come easy — you have to apply yourself. Use what gift you have and make this world a better place that we live in. … God has anointed my hands to do something to help someone. When I crochet, I’m writing his will.”