What is the Project For?

The main purpose of the Project is to combine fiber arts and friendship, throughout the world and across all boundaries. If two people can reach out to each other, no matter how different they may be, and attempt to create an honest bond, they are bringing together more than just the two of them, they are bringing with them all their other connections. And making the world a smaller place. So many of us have experienced this through the internet, whether on Ravelry or elsewhere. We’ve become close to people with different political beliefs, different faiths, different backgrounds, of vastly different ages…because we knew them first through something we shared, and grew to care for them as a person.

The Friendship Chain aims to do that in a tangible form. Taking those bonds we’ve learned to create online and making them physical in the offline world. No matter how many links separate yours from any other member, you are still linked. And your link strengthens the whole Chain. If one of the links were to be suddenly removed, the entire Chain would cease to be a Chain, and would be two long sets of links. Each loss of an individual breaks the chain and weakens the whole.

So while the Chain represents friendship and the bonds we make as knitters, crocheters, fiber artists, artisans, etc., and this board is here for the fun aspects: the games and chat and jokes and all the rest, the Project as a whole is also meant as a way to aid Suicide Prevention.

Each link represents a person, obviously, the person who made that link. Once the Chain has started growing, I will be taking it to suicide prevention workshops and using it as a talking point. I’ll be attending suicide survivor support groups and teaching the families and friends of those who have taken their lives to do basic stitches, so that they can add their own links to the Chain. I’ll also be helping those who have survived their own suicide attempt add their link, in hopes that the soothing peace that many of us find in knitting and/or crocheting can be a help to them as they move forward through their struggles. I will be happy to have the help of other FCY Group members with these projects.

The message here is a positive one, a message of hope and of community, of support and strength, and the board will be a cheerful, upbeat place of chat and games and all the rest. I’m not looking to make it a depressing project, but to raise awareness, to help those who have been affected, and possibly sometime down the road, to help raise funds for suicide prevention programs.

It’s a lofty goal, I know, and beyond that I’m also hoping for the longest fiber chain ever created, with the most people represented on it, the most countries…I’d like to see this project become something big, to show everyone out there what we can do with a little yarn and some sticks and hooks. While it may seem big, the point is that it takes such a little thing to make a large whole. Piece by piece, together we can make it a success.