I Am Woven, Hear Me Roar

During our search for colorful Swarthmore stories, we came across this rainbow of 51 hats crocheted by Sara Hiebert Burch ’79, Edward Hicks Magill Professor of Mathematics and Natural Science.

Inspired by her fellow professors Sibelan Forrester (Russian) and Patricia White (film and media studies), who sometimes knit during faculty meetings, Burch joined in the multitasking multicrafting. Over the course of a year’s worth of meetings, she crocheted a hat for charity at the rate of about one per week.

“I’d done this kind of thing before—when I lived in Australia, there was a call out for knitting sweaters for penguins whose feathers had been damaged in an oil spill,” she says. “This time, I found Knit-A-Square, which provides essential warm items for South African orphans, many of whose parents have died of AIDS. They accept squares for blankets and had a recent call out for hats and toys.”

She encourages anyone interested in putting their creativity and compassion to hands-on use to consider knit-a-square.com or a similar outlet.