Channing woman gives angels to the sick

Lisa East has been making angels out of plastic canvas and yarn since she was a little girl.

But recently, she decided to put them to good use, handing her handmade dolls out to patients in hospitals and nursing homes. So far, she’s made around 250, but she hopes to have a thousand done by the holiday season. Lisa got the idea after spending quite a bit of time in hospitals herself. She suffers from neurocardiogenic syncopy, a condition that has helped her understand how hard it can be to be sick.

“My autonomic nervous center kind of basically takes on a mind of its own, and my heart rate and blood pressure are the main two things that are affected the most. And so if I stand up for too long of a period or I get stressed out, it’s really easy for me to end up just passing out,” said Lisa East, creator of the 1000 Angels Movement.

Lisa makes each angel unique, using different yarn colors and patterns. She’ll have to make around fifty a week to reach her goal, but she says she has a lot of fun putting them together. For Lisa, the main goal is just trying to make others happy.

“I’ve been down in that dark pit of depression quite a bit and it’s not an easy road. So I’m hoping that these will help with cheering a lot of people up and so far its doing a pretty good job,” East added.

Lisa plans on handing out her angels in the Dickinson County area to start, and branching out as she gets more supplies. If you’d like to help Lisa’s project, she has a Facebook page and a paypal account set up for donations.