[Art_beyond_sight_learning_tools] Not blind to caring: Losing her vision didn't stop thiscreative volunteer

[Shelley L. Rhodes]

Herld Journal, Utah
Monday, December 20, 2004

Not blind to caring: Losing her vision didn't stop this creative volunteer

By Jasmine Michaelson


TREMONTON -- Twelve years ago, Cathi Anderson went in for acute glaucoma 
surgery. Visually impaired since birth, she had been operated on before for 
other eye problems. But the glaucoma surgery was different. Afterward, 
things, as she put it, "went south," and eventually left the Tremonton wife 
and mother of two sons (both now grown) blind.

With the loss of her sight, a lot changed.

"My attitude, mostly," she said.

She vowed that, despite her loss of independence, she would keep herself 
active and challenged.

"The hardest thing to do is to have nothing to do," she said. "I hear people 
say that they are so busy. But I would give anything to be busy."

As she pondered exactly how she would challenge herself, she thought of a 
hobby she'd started in college and become quite good at over the years: 
crocheting.

"I just wanted to do something," she said. "I don't like to be idle."

She attended a class on crocheting at a rehab center for the blind in Salt 
Lake City.

"The teacher, who was also totally blind, told us, 'You can do anything you 
want to do,'" she said.

She apparently took the statement to heart and got to work. She has since 
made 50 baby hats for humanitarian aid, won sweepstakes at the county fair 
for an original afghan pattern and has learned new patterns by having her 
husband, Bob, read them into a tape recorder, which she can play back and 
"go from there." He has also helped her by telling her the colors of her 
yarn so that she can label them in Braille.

"I can still remember colors," she said, "and which ones look good 
together."

He does, however, require a little prodding.

"He'll say that it's green, and I have to say, 'Green like grass or green 
like a pine tree?'" she laughed. "You know how men are."

Her most recent project began last year when her mother became ill and was 
under the hospice care of Vista Care in Logan. She was so impressed with the 
care her mother received that she offered her skills to Vista Care Volunteer 
Coordinator Pat Canning.

"I wanted to do something to help," Anderson said.

Canning asked her to make 24 afghans for hospice patients. Using a simple, 
sturdy pattern, Anderson began cranking them out at the beginning of this 
year.

"I lost track of how many I'd done at around 40," she said.

She recently finished the Vista Care project, in the end creating 52 warm, 
brightly colored afghans that will be given to hospice patients as Christmas 
presents this year.

Canning and the other Vista Care employees have watched her progress over 
the course of the year in awe.

"We were flabbergasted," Canning said.

With this project completed, Anderson has already decided on the next cause 
for her crochet hook. Since the younger of her two sons has been deployed to 
Iraq with the 148th Utah National Guard from Logan, she's had on her mind 
not only the soldiers overseas, but also the families they've left behind. 
In honor of them, she has decided to make baby blankets for the expectant 
wives of soldiers.

"There are so many projects you can do," she said.

Despite her service, Anderson insists she's no saint.

"This does just as much for me as it does for the people (who receive the 
blankets) because it keeps me busy," she said. "The best way to forget your 
problems is to do something for somebody else."

Mostly she just hopes she can inspire more people to learn to crochet.

"It's a dying art," she said.

Although she wouldn't mind it at all if in the process she shattered a few 
stereotypes.

"It helps to prove," she said, "that people who are blind don't just sit 
around."




http://hjnews.townnews.com/articles/2004/12/20/news/news04.txt




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