With a Little Yarn and a Lot of Compassion, Loose Ends Brings Mourners Some (Literal) Closure
Life doesn’t get tied up in a bow. When a person passes away, there’s always some amount of unfinished business. Loose Ends Project can’t handle paperwork or complete a to-do list, but it can bring some closure to mourners—literally.
By matching unfinished craft projects with volunteer “finishers” who complete and return them, Loose Ends Project meets a quiet, poignant need: It gives bereaved people one final gift from the person they’ve lost. Since it was launched in 2022, it has recruited 15,000 volunteers in 56 countries to help finish over 1,000 craft projects.
Masey Kaplan, avid knitter and Loose Ends Project co-founder, explains that Loose Ends “aims to ease grief, create community, and inspire generosity that transcends social and political boundaries by connecting strangers bound by a shared experience in handwork.” Like crafting itself, Loose Ends is a labor of love. Masey and her co-founder Jen Simonic match people themselves, aiming to create local pairings to avoid the possibility of losing precious projects in transit. They already use SquareSpace and Google Workspace, but our grant will help them pay for other data management tools and cover the costs of printed materials. Knitting needles have always been handy tools. Who knew they could also help mend broken hearts?