Weyburn resident Marion Tracey loves babies, and for the last few years, she has loved knitting caps for premature babies at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the Regina General Hospital.
She has enjoyed working with babies ever since she was first hired as a nurses’ aide at the Weyburn General Hospital shortly after it opened in 1952, which was the year she first came to this city, accompanying a friend who came here for work.
After her husband passed away, she moved to Saskatoon, where she volunteered for 30 years with the auxiliary for the University Hospital, and worked in the gift shop there. Marion began knitting caps for babies, as well as other items sold in the shop such as baby blankets and sweaters for adults.
“I’ve always loved babies from when I was a kid,” she said, noting when she began work at the Weyburn hospital, often her duties had her in the maternity ward.
She returned to Weyburn in 2016 as her daughter Judy Mulhall lives here, and for a time she continued knitting caps for premature babies for the Saskatoon hospital, as another daughter lives there made frequent trips up to Saskatoon.
Marion switched to sending her knitted hats to Regina, and her daughter helps her out a lot by taking batches of the caps up whenever she has some ready.
For a basic cap, she can knit two or three in an evening, or for a more flowery cap she can usually do one.
“I find it relaxing,” she said of her knitting activity. “I’m not a person who goes all out all the time. You do what you can.”
For a while, she knitted things for family and friends, like hats with a hole for ponytails or mittens, but in the last while she decided to concentrate solely on knitting preemie caps, and won’t take any orders for other items.
One source of help to her in Saskatoon as well as here have been donations of yarn for her knitting, specifically baby yarn. She will buy the yarn as needed, but she is always grateful when friends or members of the community are able to donate any unwanted or unused balls of baby yarn to her to help her out.
“It’s something I love doing,” said Marion, adding that donations of baby yarn are always welcome.
If anyone would like to donate baby yarn towards her ongoing knitting project, they can contact her by phone at 306-870-0202, and leave a message.
