Shuttleknit: Anne Berry and her mother Kathleen Berry producing knitwear at the Ceart Centre, Crinion Park, Wicklow. Photograph: Alan BetsonA weekly knitting club that started in a nun’s kitchen almost 30 years ago has grown into an enterprise that looks set to be Ireland’s first Traveller-women-led craft business. They believe their success could be a blueprint for Traveller women interested in entrepreneurship everywhere. Kathleen recalls how, in the mid-1990s local nun Sr Catriona Geraghty invited Traveller women, many living by the roadside, into her home “for knitting and a chat”. It now has funding from the Irish Heritage Council, which will imminently publish its first Traveller heritage strategy, to further develop its brand.
