“I’ve made bonnets for the school. I’ve made mittens.”

For Carol Albert of St. Agatha, crocheting is part of her daily routine. 

“I wake up, do a couple rows,” she says. “At night, for three, four hours, I sit on my couch and knit and crochet. That’s what I do.”

Carol says she learned how to crochet 50 years ago from her mother-in-law and sister-in-law, and now doesn’t know what she would do without it.

“I cannot see myself sitting there with my iPad and doing that all day. No. I have to do this,” she says. “I need this. I don’t know if there’s a word for it. Therapy? This is my therapy.”

One of the things Carol enjoys most about crocheting is giving away the items she makes. She is a member of a prayer shawl ministry that meets monthly at the St. Agatha Public Library, which is located at Montello Heights, where Carol lives. She says she looks forward to getting together with fellow knitters and crocheters.

“I enjoy the company so much, so much! When I leave here at 12 o’clock, I have to wait another month to see them, but I love it,” she says. “I’m glad I joined. I’ve only been in the group for about a year, but I enjoy it so much.”

 It’s a sentiment shared by the other women who participate.

“I love it. You get to see what everybody makes and meet new people,” says Stacey Bouchard of Madawaska. “After a long week of work, I just like to relax and crochet.”

“It’s comforting conversations, learning new things, and just making friends. It’s nice,” says Shelley Sirois of Madawaska.

“We chit chat and the morning goes by like this,” says Karen Plourde of Saint Agatha. “It refreshes the soul. For me, I find it heartwarming and refreshing. I go home rested after this.”

The prayer shawl ministry has been active for about three years. Eileen Belanger of Fort Kent says she was inspired to start the ministry after seeing a quilting group at Crosswinds Residential Care in Fort Kent, where she volunteers.

“There’s a quilting club there that makes quilts for all the residents, and they do it for other assisted living centers as well. And I had seen a prayer shawl, and I thought, look how nice that is,” she says.

Eileen approached the Christian Life Center’s then-director, Father Antony Alexander Maria Doss, HGN, about it, and the ministry took off from there.

One of the first women to whom Eileen turned was Cecile Voisine of Fort Kent, who had made prayer shawls through the Fort Kent Columbiettes.

“I put together a presentation of the history, and then I added the prayers that go along with the prayer shawls for different reasons, like a prayer shawl may be for the caregiver of a person who is ill, or the unity shawl is for a person who is getting united in marriage,” she says. “There’s a prayer for a military person. There are some for baptism. It goes on and on. Then, we added a whole bunch of original prayer shawl patterns, knit ones and crochet ones. Then, we added fancier shawl patterns. We put a packet together so whenever a new person joins, we present them with a packet, and here we are.”

The ministry currently has 28 participants from communities across the St. John River Valley and beyond. Louise Pelletier, who joined about two and a half years ago, travels from Caribou to participate.

“I hadn’t crocheted in a long time, and I wanted to start it up again,” she says. “I had a couple [of shawls] donated to me and my husband when he was going through cancer and passed away, and I thought it was a good cause.”

“Thanks to my mother, grandmother, and past generations, I have been blessed with the love to knit, a hobby also passed down to my daughter. Sharing my gift fills me with so much joy! Creating something beautiful from nothing, as well as spreading God’s love, why would I choose not to do this?  In my own simple way, it is my gift to the world,” says Danielle Thibeault of Fort Kent.

“I thought it was an excellent cause because giving brings pleasure to the giver as well as the receiver,” says Karen. “We have people coming back to us and saying, ‘Oh my goodness. I just love my shawl.’ I recently delivered four to people, and one of them was a widow. We gave her a beautiful white shawl, and she said, ‘I leave it on my bed, and when I go to bed at night, I wrap myself up with that one in memory of my husband.’”

Wrapping people in warmth is at the heart of the prayer shawl ministry. Prayers are woven in with every stitch, and when completed, the shawls are blessed by a priest. They also include a card, which reads in part: “There are many blessings in this shawl that was created for you. It starts with a prayer and some yarn, with a lot of help from the Lord, too.”

“It’s just to show that somebody is thinking about them,” says Eileen. “They feel the warmth.”

“We have so many homebound people. People are bringing them Communion, and they know that we pray for them, but giving them a prayer shawl lets them know that we know where they are and how important they are to the parish,” says Sister Jackie Ayotte, DW, who participates in the group. “And not only does the person feel it, but the family feels it as well. If you have a mother who is hurting and then suddenly there’s peace and there’s comfort, and she talks about it, the whole family feels it.”

The group has donated prayer shawls to places such as Aroostook Mental Health Services, St. Joseph Memory Care in Frenchville, and Mizpah, a sanctuary in Grand Isle for those battling life-threatening illnesses.  

Lucy Cyr of Madawaska says she keeps an eye out for individuals who might benefit from receiving a prayer shawl.

“I’m at the Daughters [of Isabella]. I’m at a senior luncheon group. My husband has a lot of friends, so sometimes I’ll go with him to [Tim Horton’s], and I’ll look around and a lot of seniors are there, so I’ll say, ‘This person could use a shawl,’” she says.

In addition to their monthly meetings in St. Agatha, the women also visit Ridgewood Estates in Madawaska and knit or crochet with the elderly residents there.

“Some of them want to make shawls, but a lot of them want to make dishcloths, so we help them with knitting or crocheting. They make those to give as gifts to their grandchildren,” says Cecile. “And, while we’re sitting there, it’s really nice to listen to their stories.”

 While comforting prayer shawls remain at the heart of the ministry, the women also make and donate other items, such as baptismal shawls, pichous (slippers), and hats, scarves, and mittens for children.

“Two years ago, we donated 132 hats to the faith formation in Fort Kent for children from pre-K to second grade. This past year, we donated more to the kids at the Dr. Levesque Elementary School [in St. Agatha],” says Cecile.

 Stacey’s specialty is dolls.

“My grandmother had made me a doll when I was little. And when she passed away, I inherited her crochet bag, and I found her pattern in there. I ordered the heads online, and I started to see if I could do the pattern, so now I donate them to girls who are sick,” she says. “It makes me feel good.”

The ladies say they know the prayer shawls and other donations are lifting spirits. One gentleman who received a shawl wrote, “I guess Jesus has angels everywhere to keep our spirits high.” Another woman shared in a letter, “I’ve been under so much worry and stress the past few years, especially the past few months, something I’ve tried to pray away, but it’s been really hard. Yesterday, when I picked up the prayer shawls, I felt such a tremendous amount of peace, and I could feel it the rest of the day. Something lifted off of me.”

Eileen says notes like that show that the ministry is worthwhile.

“That’s why we do what we do."