ROCKLAND — It began as pile of yarn, some knitting needles, empty boxes from various nonprofits and many dedicated volunteers, all at Rockland's Winslow Holbrook Memorial Park, corners of Main and Park streets, at noon on Friday, October 14. It was the start of the Community Blanket, 24-hour Knitting Marathon, and it ran until Saturday, October 15, ending at noon.

Volunteers knitted in two-hour shifts around the clock for the fifth straight year the event has been held, to create a blanket that is raffled off. Several nonprofits set up boxes for nonperishable food items. The AIO Food Pantry receives all the food and the nonprofit who collected the most will receive the proceeds from the raffle held during the Festival of Lights.

The knitting marathon is now in its fifth year.

"It's a win, win, win, win situation," said Mim Bird, owner of Over the Rainbow Yarn, 18 School Street in Rockland and who was organizer of the 24-hour knitting marathon.

"National I love Yarn Day is always on this weekend in October," she said. "We wanted to do something to celebrate I Love Yarn Day. We thought we would do some knitting in public event. We would gather a bunch of people up and just knit in public."

Bird remembered something she read in a book about knitting with four people, eight hands around.

“We would knit the four people in shifts for 24 hours and have a blanket,” she said.

"Well, then we had a blanket and didn't know what to do with it," she said. "We thought we would donate it to charity and my sister said if you donate it to them, then they have a blanket and don't know what to do with it."

Bird said they decided to raffle the blanket off and donate the money to a charity.

"Then we could decide what charity to give the money to," she said. "We decided to let people vote for which charity should get the money."

Ultimately the group set up boxes for the charities and accepted non-perishable food items for a vote. The charity that received the most donated food would receive the proceeds form the raffle.

"AIO gets all the food that's used to vote," she said. "Whoever has the most food in their box gets the proceeds from the raffle; somebody who loves it gets the blanket and we get to knit all night, so it's a win, win, win, win situation."

Bird says she loves doing the event.

"I have been a knitting evangelist since I was a little girl," she said. "I love the fact that we get together. There are 48 shifts in the marathon. The first year we had 45 people filling those 48 shifts and we had so much fun, the only problem was getting them to leave at the end of their shift."

Bird said this year they could have used a second blanket because there were so many knitters who want to work on it.

"We are going to be able to donate more than 500 pounds of food to the food pantry this year," she said. "We've also been able to give around $500 to a local nonprofit. And being out here in public we get people stopping by all the time just to say hi and look at our knitting."

One knitter, Rachel Jones, spins yarn and said she is getting ready to open her own shop in Rockport.

"On the Round Yarn will be its name," she said. " I will be doing hand-dyed U.S. processed yarns that are speckle-dyed, variegated or semi-solid. The new studio will open next month across from MRC in Rockport."

Knitter Polly Peters said knotted items are popular Christmas gifts, but can be daunting.

"Its pressure knitting to knit things for Christmas," she said. "I'll knit socks this year, a baby hat and a young person's hat for my two grandsons."

Over the Rainbow Yarn also does a mitten tree every year, but that's another story for the Christmas season.