When the passerby stopped and asked what she was making, McGonagle said it was a hat for a friend hospitalized with leukemia.
McGonagle has crocheted dozens of hats and given them to cancer patients throughout the country.
“It’s fun to crochet them, and it feels good to send stuff away,” said McGonagle, the daughter of Carrie McGonagle and David Harvey.
McGonagle began crocheting as a young girl when her grandmother, Dixie McGonagle, taught her.
Looking back, she said, it was amazing she learned to crochet. Her grandmother is left-handed, and she is right-handed.
“It’s easiest for same-handed people to teach each other,” she said. When crocheting, the crochet hook is usually held in the person’s dominant hand.
One of McGonagle’s first projects was a scarf she described as badly made. During the years she’s made more scarves, hats and blankets.
Last fall, she began making hats for cancer patients. She said the project came about when her pastor’s granddaughter had cancer. Wanting to do something for the girl, McGonagle crocheted her a striped hat.
Then, she, along with her grandmother and another woman, began making hats and sending them to cancer hospitals in Ohio, Alabama, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Most hats go to children, and Lyndi doesn’t know the recipients.
“I mostly make them for total strangers,” she said.
She makes hats in a variety of colors and patterns. She said that she tries to select soft yarn, both for her comfort when creating it and for the comfort of the wearer. She prefers using lighter colors because the stitching is easier to see.
To crochet a hat, it takes McGonagle about two hours. She’s figured that she can make seven hats with one skein of yarn. When she completes a hat, she sews a small heart onto the brim before sending it away. More than 50 hats have been sent to hospitals.
McGonagle, who will be a senior at Piqua High School this fall, said that she crochets almost every day, and she and her grandmother often crochet while watching television. She also brings her yarn and hook with her when going other places.
When I was interviewing her, she was talking as her fingers wrapped yarn around a crochet hook. Neither her conversation nor her crochet work faltered.
In addition to crocheting and school work, Lyndi keeps busy participating in activities at her church, St. Paul’s Evangelical Church in Piqua, and in cross country and ROTC at school. She wants to be a doctor.
Do you know of someone who should be featured in Hereabouts? Send an email to Beth Sears at sears@erinet.com or call her at (937) 448-0101.
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