Youngchurch Knit one, give too
Our gifts live on and on, after we are gone. The good that we can do today will still be here when we’re away. Listen to our song, and carry it along to do the good that Kiki would. Our gifts live on and on. Now spread the words that Kiki said .... If you have a gift, then give it away.
W
hen the audience left the performance of Kiki’s Hats—The Musical! at Kins- men Lutheran Church, Houston, in August, they were humming a tune and lifted by this message: Our gifts live on and on. Warren Hanson is a member of Kinsmen and an author and illustrator of many books, including Kiki’s Hats (Tristan Publishing, 2007), based on a former neighbor, Ki Ki Gore, of St. Paul, Minn., who has been knitting since age 8. Last year Lynnae Schatz, director of congregational life at Kinsmen, asked Hanson to consider adapting his book into a musical for the children and adults to perform. “When Lynnae first asked me to do it, I thought, ‘What makes me think I can do that?’ but once the seed was planted, I couldn’t let it go. I started hearing these tunes ...,” said Hanson, who said he deliberately wrote a simple, short musical so other congregations could use it. Schatz scheduled a choir camp the week before the performance to cast and rehearse the 30-minute musical. Several years
Send stories of your youth group (pre- school-confirmation age) to: Andrea Pohlmann Kulik , 8765 W. Higgins Rd., Chicago IL 60631; andrea.pohlmann@
thelutheran.org.
back, another neigh- bor encouraged Gore to tell Hanson about her passion for knitting as an idea for a book. Now in her mid-70s, she’s lost count of the hats she has knitted.
64 The Lutheran •
www.thelutheran.org VERA MATSON
Children and Barb Velotas as “Kiki” from Kinsmen Lutheran Church, Houston, perform in Kiki’s Hats—The Musical! The story’s spirit of giving included not only the cast but friends, relatives, nursing home residents and retired teachers who helped knit 1,000 hats for the production.
Most have been given away. In the book, Kiki teaches people the joy of giving by letting them take her hats and give them away. That joy and commitment to giving lives on, even when the fictional Kiki goes to heaven. The production needed lots of hats—in fact, an entire mountain of them.
With a goal of 1,000 hats, knitting needles started twirling—in Houston, but also by friends and relatives as far away as Wisconsin and South Dakota. “Everything about this project was about the message of the story—getting involved and giving,” Hanson said. “Everyone pitching in, even to knit caps, was so much in the spirit of the story.” This winter, the hats from the production will be hand-delivered to the Peruvian Evangelical Lutheran Church, a companion of the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast Synod, so families can stay warm in the Andean cold. Members of the approximately 40-member cast also “passed the hats” during the production, collecting more than $3,000 for SIRE, Houston’s Therapeutic Equestrian Centers. SIRE provides opportunities for people with mental, physical and/or emotional disabilities to benefit from the calm effects of being with horses.
Hanson said one of the biggest challenges was finding a way for the pile of hats that Kiki sits on to grow higher and higher before the audience’s eyes. Bryan Fields, owner of Aerialift Co., an industrial lift provider in Houston, appeared on the scene. Fields is neither a member nor Lutheran, but embraced the chance to help tell Kiki’s story, Hanson said. M
Julie B. Sevig
For more information on Kiki’s Hats—The Musical! ($100), visit
www.warrenhanson.com/KKH.html.
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