Prison officials in Alaska in an Eagle River correctional facility might think of her as the Mad Hatter. But one thing is certain: no one has to tell Nancy Aberly to tend to her knitting. She does that quite well.
Not only did she once furnish the Eagle River prisoners with yarn and tools for knitting hats for children in need, she taught teach inmates how to knit. From her home town in Anchorage to her winter home in Yuma, she has also taught both men and women how to knit hats for those in need.
What began in Anchorage, where Aberly knitted hats for school children in her daughter’s special needs classes, burgeoned into a project whose pace outgrew her arthritic hands’ ability to keep up. Aberly’s talents have supplied each of 16 Title I schools in Alaska with 40 hats for special needs children. Others contributed an equal number of pairs of gloves.
When in 2010 she offered to make hats for a cancer center that already had plenty, she learned about Yuma’s Assistance League’s Operation School Bell, a program that helps clothe needy students. Here, she approached Betty Borland, who was in charge, offering to supply knit hats for them.
“‘We’ve never had them before,'” Aberly said that Borland told her. “‘Could you supply enough of them so that every child will get a hat?'” Aberly said she could.
So from 2010 to 2013, she crafted about 3,000 hats. She recalled that from the very first day, Borland said, “‘I don’t know if the kids will want hats.’ I said, ‘Trust me, they will.’ They put them out on a counter for the kids to choose a hat, and she called me and said, ‘Don’t stop.'”
