An 86-year-old man who can no longer engage in some of his favorite activities has picked up a new hobby – and new-found fame as a result.
Ed Moseley, a retired engineer and resident of the Dogwood Forest Assisted Living community in Acworth, Georgia, recently learned how to knit after the staff at his facility brought in an outreach program to make caps for preemie babies at the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at Northside Hospital.
Using a loom kit, and some help from friends and family, Ed managed to learn how to knit, and has since become a cap knitting machine at the senior community.
‘I prevailed on my daughter to get a kit, and it comes with the right size loom and the right tools to help you knit one,’ Ed told ABC News.
‘I just followed the instructions. It was easy. Somehow I had never knitted, and I always associated knitting with a bunch of needles but this looked pretty doable for me. I went through two or three before I came out with a good finished product.’
He has knitted more than 50 caps himself, in a wide array of colors. But beyond that, he has also inspired many more people to take up the hobby, including other residents and staff at the community as well as children at the school where his granddaughter works.
People began donating yarn to Ed and even dropping off their own caps to add to the collection.
Thanks to widower Ed, more than 300 babies are toasty warm in a knitted cap of their very own.
The caps were donated to the hospital on Thursday, which was National Preemie Awareness Day.
The staff at the Northside hospital were more than grateful to Ed and his supporters for the donation, with clinical manager of the special care nursery calling them ‘wonderful gifts’.
Grateful families: The caps went to babies born prematurely at the Northside Hospital’s NICU
But the hospital and the babies aren’t the only ones grateful for the caps getting knitted.
Ed himself has said that he loves how knitting not only allows him to help others in his spare time, but it also gives him something to do while engaging watching his favorite sport on TV – golf.
Following that project, Ed has turned to a new endeavor – knitting caps for all of his grandkids.
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