Article in AC Press December 26th 2012 by Elisa Lala:Staff Writer


It all started in the winter of 2012 when GABLES member Fran Geores had an idea to give back to our community, which is GABLES motto "The Gay Group doing Good Things for the Entire Community"

A small group gathered around a table in the upstairs room of the Back Corner Cafe, a coffee shop in North Cape May, to learn how to knit. On the table in front of the group were a couple of coffee mugs and several spools of colorful yarn. At this paricular moment, "Baby, It's Cold Outside" was playing in the background.

"So you insert your needle, you wrap your yarn, you pull the loop through, you transfer it to the other needle, then you pull the needle out," said knitting instructor Fran Geores, The gathering was put on by Scarf It Up, a recently formed charitable knitting program organized and instructed by Geores, and sponsored by GABLES of Cape May County, a nonprofit social group dedicated to representing the local GLBT by promoting equality and acceptance of its members into the community and doing community service projects.

"I thought this would be a great project for GABLES because GABLES is always so active in the community and does so much to support the people who live in the community," Geores said. "But also now that the wintertime is here and things have slowed down, there's not as much to do. So I thought it was a good idea to not only get some people together and to enjoy each other's company, but also to help those in need."

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Participation is open to anyone, and all supplies will be available to program participants at no cost, including knitting needles to borrow and an assortment of colorful yarn to chose from. Also, participants can come to as many or as few sessions as they choose.

"Once you get into knitting, it's really very easy to incorporate charitable knitting into what you're already doing," she said, as she held up a blue knit hat. "I had used this yarn to make a cardigan for a friend of mine as a gift, and I had just enough left over to do a hat. So this will be the first contribution to this project."