A group from my church read Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. It is about twin brothers growing up in Ethiopia in a medical mission. Good book. One of the important parts of the story is the discovery of a way to treat fistula.
A fistula occurs when a woman in labor cannot deliver her baby and the pressure of contractions for days causes openings to be torn between her uterus and colon so she gets a constant flow of smelly fluids running down her legs that she cannot control. It is truly horrendous and the women, because they smelled and seemed "unclean" were often shunned after this happened to them.
It looks like The Fistula Foundation is the charity that is doing the most to end this problem, so this shawl will be called the FF Celtic Cross Shawl, and be dedicated to them. I hope if people like the design they will look at the links, maybe watch their award-winning movie "A Walk to Beautiful" or the slideshow "From Despair to Dignity" that the Fistula Foundation made to raise awareness about this problem and what can be done to help.
I think this is the essence of a prayer shawl ministry - women coming together, sharing something that is uniquely womanly, to help others. How perfect that in this case it will be helping fellow women in their time of need!
I've started a thread on Ravelry for a KAL of this pattern. When all the errors are corrected I'll post the instructions here as a new post called FF Celtic Cross.
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