ESTEVAN - Focused and relaxed, Angela Brokenshire holds her knitting circle loom close by her bad hand and carefully, mash by mash, puts the yarn through, working on her 89th pandemic scarf.
Brokenshire, who currently resides at the Estevan Regional Nursing Home, has been knitting all her life. But since the pandemic hit and Brokenshire, like other residents, found herself spending way more time in her room, the transformation of colourful yarn into cozy scarves became her full-time entertainment, hobby and even therapy.
"I just decided to make them because I had nothing else better to do in my life," said Brokenshire with a smile. "It makes me feel better."
It takes Brokenshire about a day and a half to create a scarf. But it took her many years of practice to perfect her skills.
Brokenshire suffered polio when she was two and a half years old, and for the rest of her life, she's been living with the aftereffects. She learned how to knit back when she was a young woman attending a special training school in Moose Jaw. With just one good hand, she found the knitting circle loom to be a very useful tool to allow her to create beautiful pieces on her own.
Brokenshire, who is 74 years old now, would make scarves on and off throughout her life, but this hobby became more meaningful after she moved to the nursing home.
"When she moved in here, she made a few and then she sold them at the tea (auction organized at the Estevan Regional Nursing Home) that Christmas. And then of course she decided well, she's just going to make more. So she made some more. And then she never quit, she just kept on going," explained Brokenshire's friend Marilyn Graham.
The first experience selling her scarves made Brokenshire feel "much happier," as she put it, so right away she knew she wanted to participate in a tea and bake sale again. The pandemic hit, opening up even more time to focus on the hobby and allowing Brokenshire to build up the bright collection.
With more and more scarves piling up in the boxes in the corners of her not-so-big room, Brokenshire soon came up with a bigger plan for her product.
Some of the scarves she had already given or sold to people around.
"I gave one of them to my friend Dale. I gave one to Jessica's little girl. Jessica's a housekeeper from here, and her grandpa's in here. He's next door, so when she comes in to see her grandpa, this little gal, she will come to see me," shared Brokenshire.
Besides, she already knew that once she can do so, she'll offer a wide variety of colourful scarves of different sizes to shoppers at the nursing home’s tea and bake sale this Christmas. And whatever is left after the event, she decided to donate to the Community Hamper Association’s Angel Tree.
"I said if you sell some and you still have a whole bunch left, what are you going to do with them all? And she was, 'I think I'll just give them to the Angel Tree for somebody that needs to have a scarf for winter.' I said, that would be a wonderful idea," recalled Graham.
"I think Angel Tree (patrons) will like it even more than (people) at the hospital (sale)," said Brokenshire.
With a sister living in B.C. and a brother residing in Arizona, Brokenshire didn't have many visitors over the past 17 months, and knitting became even more valuable for her.
"I like doing this. This is just my hobby. And it's relaxing," Brokenshire said.
Currently, most of the collection is stored in her room, and she is really looking forward to finding new owners for the existing scarves so she could start over again.
"That was her big excitement that she's going to be able to just start all over again. It gives her another mission or another goal," Graham explained.
Quite often Brokenshire takes her work out of her room, and if other residents show interest in what she is doing, she happily shares her knowledge about knitting. She's already taught some of the residents her technique and inspired some of the staff to follow her passion.
"She likes to help people," Graham said.
"They … help me out so I can help them and show them," Brokenshire added.
Most of the time, Brokenshire asks Graham to pick up yarn, and sometimes she gets some donated. Usually, she knows exactly what colours she wants to combine in one scarf, but other times she just mixes and matches, trying to use up what she already has. While many scarves are random, Brokenshire also created a few Estevan Bruins gold and black scarves, and several to support the Saskatchewan Roughriders, all of which went off like hotcakes.
"She does all the design. Sometimes she'll ask me 'Well, does this colour go with this colour? Or does this colour go with this colour?' And I'll give her advice, but for the most part, she does her own design," explained Graham.
Knitting helps Brokenshire focus and relax, get her head off some problems and just have quality time. Besides, this hobby creates room for a social life, as it involves help from a few people around. Her friend down the hall helps Brokenshire to wrap yarn that comes in spools into balls, so it would be easier for her to work with. A maintenance man at the nursing home made a wooden loom for her and also built a wooden box for her yarn. Once she's done with a new scarf, she calls Graham, so she would help closing it up, which especially during the lockdown months happened quite often.
"Since COVID hit, of course, she couldn't go anywhere. I couldn't take her out, her life became pretty much here. So sometimes I was coming three times a week to take scarves off for her," Graham said.
Brokenshire, who was born and raised in the North Portal area, left the training school in Moose Jaw when she was 27 to move into semi-independent living in a group home in Weyburn. She later moved to Redvers, got married and lived independently with her husband. After he passed away, Brokenshire went back to semi-independent living. She moved to Estevan where for several years she worked at Estevan Diversified Services until she moved to the nursing home about four years ago.
If anyone is interested in purchasing Brokenshire's scarves before the Estevan Regional Nursing Home Auxiliary’s Christmas tea and bake sale, they can contact Graham at 306-634-7621.
