Alma Dalinsky has handmade 137 afghan for people with special needs across the country.
Since 1999, Alma Dalinsky has been helping special-needs children and young adults keep warm.
The 81-year-old St. Anne's Retirement Community resident has crocheted 137 afghans for Operation Cover-up, a program of the Catholic men's organization International Order of Alhambra.
According to its website (http://www.orderalhambra.org/), the organization focuses its primary efforts on providing assistance to people developmentally disabled by mental retardation through its charitable programs and projects.
Operation Cover-Up has distributed more than 2,100 afghans nationwide since it began in 1998.
Dalinsky said she receives enough red and white yarn from Operation Cover-Up to make two afghans each time she requests supplies.
Once completed, "I send them to a lady in Michigan, and she distributes them," Dalinsky said. She then gets more supplies to crochet more afghans.
All of the 52-by-72-inch afghans are made with the same pattern, but "the tricky part is the red middle to start and get the right size," Dalinsky said.
When it's done, she puts fringes on the short side of the afghan. Alhambra adds its emblem and a tag that says the afghan was "handcrocheted especially for you by Alma Dalinsky."
For her efforts, Dalinsky has received numerous photos, cards and letters of appreciation from the recipients or their families. A neighboring St. Anne's resident, Betty Shirk, made a scrapbook of all of the notes, she said.
Dalinsky said her mother, Mary Bonholtzer, taught her to crochet. "She did it a lot," Dalinsky said.
Dalinsky said she would always crochet during the evenings after she was done working at her job as an insurance company secretary.
Dalinsky, who doesn't have children, said she would fill up a cradle with crocheted toys, doilies and afghans with various stitches.
"It's a good pastime," she said.
Now that Dalinsky is retired, crocheting still fills up a lot of her time.
"But this is my project now, because what am I going to do with all this stuff?" she said.
When Dalinksy is not crocheting, she reads. "I love to read anything that's a good story, especially ones that you can't lay down," she said.
Before her husband, Leonard, died in 1997, she enjoyed traveling in Europe and on cruises.
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