Threads

THREADS is a story of shared resilience and redemption. One woman has a remarkable gift, another woman desperately needs one, and the two are unwittingly connected by a man in the middle. After a tragic loss, a mother seeks consolation by knitting hundreds of magnificent little sweaters. When one of the sweaters is inadvertently shipped to Chile, it's stolen by a poverty-stricken single woman, who creatively repurposes it. Irene's life in a privileged neighborhood of small town Canada is all going according to plan.
But when she loses a child to sudden infant death, she is unable to cope. But then, she rediscovers the familiar joy and comfort of knitting. So she begins. The problem is that she never stops, and in her obsession, she knits and hoards a series of extraordinary children's sweaters. Seeking to end it, her husband finally donates the sweaters to a charity. While most of the sweaters are sold locally, one of them is inadvertently shipped off to Chile where Columba, a single mother who works at a used clothing depot, steals it.
Columba is also struggling with the loss of a child, albeit in entirely different circumstances. But like Irene, she finds solace in the little sweater. And besides, if she hadn't rescued it, it would have languished amidst the tons of North American garbage that is routinely dumped in the used clothing cemetery of the Atacama Desert. The sweater isn't the only thing Columba steals but it's the most magnificent.
Eventually, her thievery is discovered and she must find another way to survive. Back in Canada, Irene's sweaters are sold through a boutique and they become a hot item-to the point where they give rise to a local sweater cult. But when Irene spies her sweaters in the store window and then sees strange children wearing them on the street, she's outraged. She begins to steal them back and it all gets very out of hand.
Meanwhile, in Chile, Columba is so grateful for the miraculous little sweater that she conceives a way to share its mystical powers with her neighbors.  Sprinkled with magic realism and humor, this multi-narrative story exposes cultural differences, social inequities and global environmental damage caused by hyper-consumerism. But it's really about two women in search of consolation and our shared humanity.