Continuous thread

There’s a secret digital map of London that even mi5 has never seen. On its glowing surface, hundreds of coloured lights dot the capital. Each represents someone who plays a crucial role in knitting the city together – or weaving, dyeing or crocheting it. That’s because this map shows volunteers from Loose Ends, the originator of the global phenomenon known as “legacy handicrafts”. Its mission is simple and stirring: to deliver the last mile of love.

Loose Ends is registered in Seattle and unlike another local success story, launched by Bill Gates, this one really did start out micro and soft. Knitting is what brought Jennifer Simonic and Masey Kaplan together. From fumbling first attempts at baby blankets to choosing jumper designs for that last university-bound teen, their shared hobby was a constant. And so was a touching story that the two kept hearing in knitting circles.

Whenever their craft community lost a member to death or disability, that person’s knitting basket invariably contained a work in progress intended for loved ones. But for bereaved families, inheriting these unfinished handiworks could be its own sad challenge – what could they do with a confusing tangle of yarn, patterns and equipment? To the trained eyes of Kaplan and Simonic, however, something very different lay in those bundles: a handmade quilt, a cardigan or another poignant heirloom so close to being treasured.

The two friends had an epiphany: that they could link these labours of love with “finishers”, volunteer craftspeople who are eager to complete them. Except for postage and the cost of materials, all work could be done for free. The Loose Ends motto reads, “Started with love by them. Finished with care by us.” Soon, word of the initiative spread. Requests and volunteers poured in. When the Loose Ends brochure appeared in yarn shops, volunteers offered to translate it into Spanish and Swedish, Hmong and Hebrew.

Though Loose Ends began with a focus on knitting, families started asking for help completing everything from English tapestry to Tunisian crochet. Just months after launch, Loose Ends had to retire its original logo. Their original ball-of-yarn design no longer captured its worldwide network, busy not only with knitting needles but also with weaving looms, quilting frames and amigurumi patterns. Today, Loose Ends has 29,000 finishers spread across 70 countries – not bad for a homespun project started barely two years ago. “It doesn’t belong to me and Jen,” says Kaplan. “We co-founded it but we just set the table. Then all of these people started showing up.”

Among them was Olympic diver Tom Daley. The UK athlete became a sensation at the Paris Games when the media caught him knitting between medal-winning dives. The scoop that those reporters missed? Daley had just become a Loose Ends finisher. He even planned to crochet his first assignment during the competition, returning from Paris carrying it in his arms. Instead, he brought home a silver medal. But completing his project soon after (a grandmother’s rainbow blanket, chewed in half by the family terrier), he sang the praises of Loose Ends to his million-plus social-media followers. “They’re a small team doing amazing things,” he wrote. A surge of new volunteers and projects inundated Kaplan and Simonic.

On a recent morning, joining the queen bees of this global fibre-crafts movement, we assumed that we were sitting in the presence of knitting masters. We were mistaken. Simonic, needles flashing throughout our conversation, is asked to unveil her handiwork. “Oh, this?” she says, smirking and holding up the beginnings of a colourful jumper. “Had to rip apart the whole thing. Twice. Par for the course when I knit.”

So which craft is their true speciality? “That’s easy,” says Kaplan. “Matchmaking.” Indeed, like a pair of knitted Sorting Hats, they have matched thousands of carefully chosen finishers with individual heirlooms. Pairing people with projects, they say, requires the right balance of “geography, skill level and druthers”. And perhaps add an abiding trust in human nature.

“There’s a level of divisiveness everywhere these days,” says Kaplan. “Though we never ask about such things, participants who submit a project sometimes bring up their religion and their politics.”

“And their pronouns,” adds Simonic.

“We don’t take any of that into account when making a match,” says Kaplan. “So we’re connecting people who might, under other circumstances, be protesting against each other. But right now, right here? Each of them knows that this person has lost a loved one. So they just think, ‘I know how to knit. I can do this for them.’”

What every crafter understands, they point out, and what cuts through this divide, is that there’s nothing quite like a handcrafted gift. Recipients often speak of a knit or woven present as an embrace, carrying the warmth of the person who started it. It’s little wonder that many crafters facing a health crisis will begin a handmade project for someone close, to comfort that person and themselves. Loose Ends’ mission is to ensure that every one of those gifts reaches the loved one for whom it was intended.

Finishers often put in a duplicate stitch, sometimes easier to feel than see, as a subtle marker. It’s where the original crafter left off and the volunteer’s handiwork begins. Finishers relate how moving it can be, not just to receive a completed piece, but to work on one – transforming what is often an everyday hobby into a profound act.

Charlotte Warshaw, a London finisher, is carefully stitching another family’s heirloom tapestry. Its owner, who was never taught needlepoint, couldn’t finish her mother’s beautiful handiwork nor bear to part with it. So she carried its dangling threads for 25 years until she heard of Loose Ends.

Vintage projects – and this one is far from the oldest – can pose challenges. In this case, neither the pattern nor the yarn colours needed to complete it are still being made. This led to the kind of treasure hunt that is a Loose Ends speciality.

With Warshaw’s ingenuity (and this time without the help of the group’s online forum), yarn collections were rummaged through and matching colours sourced. “Speaking as a finisher, it’s a real honour to be trusted with something like this,” says Warshaw. “It’s not a burden. It’s a gift. This is not one more random scarf I’m knitting. It’s a project that means something.”

Finishers are as varied as the projects that they take on. Meeting them dispels stereo­types about your typical handcrafter. Daley might be Loose Ends’ best-known millennial but he is far from the only one. Interest in fibre crafts, which was growing even before the coronavirus pandemic, became supercharged during lockdown. While other home-friendly activities also flourished, most lost steam once restrictions were lifted. But the boom in handicrafts just kept expanding. According to a study by the Association for Creative Industries, the global crafts market is, for the first time, expected to top $50bn (€47bn) this year. That’s an increase of more than 20 per cent since the height of the pandemic. In another recent study, it found that the largest group of crafters (41 per cent) are millennials.

As many younger consumers question the effects of fast fashion – or just find handiwork cool – granny’s crafting skills are increasingly being embraced by her diy grandchildren. One of them, Elise Craft, more than lives up to her name. “I’m basically an old-time grandma in a Gen X body,” says Craft. From an early age, she picked up knitting, sewing, cross stitch and quilting, finally drawing the line at willow-basket making. But becoming a finisher has been its own kind of learning experience, she adds. “When I opened the email from Jen and read about this project, it struck me that this could have been my own grandmother leaving these quilting squares behind. The more you work on a project such as this, the more you feel a connection to this person who you’ve never met. You sort of form a kinship and feel a real responsibility to preserve the aspects of the original crafter that are in the piece.”

In a rare case for Loose Ends, this quilt is being finished for a finisher. Expert knitter Lynn Richardson, volunteering to complete a complex jumper pattern, suddenly remembered that her family had its own partially done heirloom. It included notes, carefully chosen colours and quilting squares that her mother had started and her father had later saved from going to charity.

The bonds linking project owners and finishers can run deep. “Doing something for someone else, who is grieving, doesn’t mean that the finisher doesn’t feel it too,” says Simonic. “The loss affects both sides.” And so, it seems, does the joy. The jumper that was keeping Richardson’s needles busy belongs to Hilary Krisman. Her mother had worked on it until she died recently, just shy of 100. “It has been transformational,” says Krisman of the richly coloured gift in her hands. “She was so determined that this would be ready for me but, as she got older, her hands became less and less able to continue.” Krisman, who doesn’t knit, remembers thinking at the time, “There must be other people like me in this situation, who don’t know how to get their legacy completed. But who do you turn to?” Then she heard about Loose Ends. Still too emotional to try on her jumper, she can’t stop admiring it. “This will be cherished,” she says. “It will be passed down through my family. This is so wonderful.”

As Loose Ends continues to grow, touching lives across the globe, is there anywhere for the organisation to go but up? Yes, as it turns out: sideways. New volunteers, asked to list the fibre crafts that they know, include other creative skills that they would like to share. The successful model that Loose Ends has pioneered seems ripe for helping more crafts. If two suburban knitters can quit their day jobs and nurture a global community, perhaps finishers can be found to complete works in other creative fields. Pushed to reveal whether they might expand beyond fibre crafts, the founders hesitate. Then both start talking at once. “Woodworking,” says Simonic. “We’re exploring that. I’m actually meeting a woodworker next week to talk about what it might look like. But we’re just tinkering.”

“People are demanding it already,” says Kaplan, laughing. “Plenty of men tell us that they’re keen for us to begin offering woodworking. One guy says that it will finally let him buy that expensive tool that he could never justify before.”

“But we’re not ready yet,” says Simonic. “We need to fund our technology first, so we can get all of this stuff into an app. But in two, three years? Check back.”

As it passes its second anniversary, Loose Ends has been expanding into new countries – Armenia being the latest – and maybe new crafts. Looking back, which achievement stands out for the founders? The two old friends look at each other. Kaplan speaks first.

“We have a local woman in her eighties, an amazing knitter and one of our earliest finishers,” she says. “At the beginning she completed one of our first pilot projects. Afterwards she came up to me and said, ‘I’ve been afraid to start a new project for my own grandkids because I didn’t know what would happen to me; I didn’t know if I’d be here to get it done. But what you’re doing has given me the courage to keep crafting.’ And she sent us pictures after she made her first new piece for the children.”

Simonic nods. “The work we do lets older people, or people who may fall ill, continue to do something that means so much and that makes them happy,” she says. “With Loose Ends around, they no longer have to worry that the gift that they’re making will be thrown away or end up in some charity shop.”

Connecting generations, cementing legacies and giving elder craftspeople the assurance to carry on – maybe these 28,000 volunteers shouldn’t be called finishers. Their achievements seem to warrant a new name: continuers.

And perhaps the worldwide success of Loose Ends is a sign of something else as well. It shows that, even in today’s metaverse moment, not all of the important innovations are digital. Sometimes the best way to pass down a skill – and a gift – is still from hand to hand. — L