Staff at Chateau St. Michael’s Care Home will stay toasty warm this winter with new scarves created by a resident who has been knitting for over nine decades.
“I’ve been knitting for 91 years, so I should know what I’m doing,” chuckled Irene Morrell, who turned 96 on Nov. 15. “My grandmother taught me when I was five. And I like to do things for nice people. And these people in here are very, very good.”
Morrell — born and raised in Saskatoon — moved to the care home 15 months ago and has been knitting since she arrived. However, she spent the first 12 months finishing other projects, such as making sweaters for her family.
After that, she realized she should find something else to do instead of sitting around feeling sorry for herself — which is what too many people do, she pointed out. So, she decided to make scarves for all the full-time staff at Chateau St. Michael’s.
Her son bought her $300 worth of yarn — reds, greens, blues and purples — so she could make scarves that suit each care home employee.
Since September, she has produced more than 50 scarves, each taking one-and-a-half to two days to complete. Each scarf has 26 stitches per row, four rows per inch and is 43 inches long, for a total of 4,472 stitches per unit or 223,600 stitches for 50 scarves — and millions since she first began as a child.
“It gives me something to do. You can’t sit and watch TV all day — at least I can’t,” Morrell said. “And I’m losing my sight, so I can’t read the way I used to read. I used to read two to three books a day, but I can’t do that anymore.”
Making scarves is not challenging for Morrell, who pointed out that if she can design and make dresses and coats, then scarves are easy. While she has no idea how many items she has created during the past 91 years, she joked that she has likely used “miles and miles and miles” of yarn.
Morrell recalled her Grade 1 teacher sending a note home suggesting she do something else at recess besides knitting.
“My mother just laughed and said maybe that’s a good idea. But I was trying to get something done for my doll,” laughed Morrell.
Morrell’s family moved to Dawson Creek, British Columbia during the Great Depression so her father could work. They then moved to Vancouver, where she met her husband, Jim, from Saskatoon. The couple later had two children, three grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
The grandkids and great-grandkids know how to knit, but they don’t do it very often because they have more interesting things to do, said Morrell.
After completing all the scarves, the avid knitter plans to start working on sweaters for her two great-grandsons. She joked that completing one sweater would take her a while because one great-grandson is 6-2 in height and has long arms.
While knitting is a fun hobby for Morrell, she says her most important contribution — and one that makes her proud — was reading to visually impaired law students at the University of Saskatchewan for 37 years.
Because of her volunteer contributions over the years, the YWCA gave her a “Woman of Distinction” lifetime achievement award in 2007.
