Today will be the first Give Back Sunday of 2021 (held on the 2nd Sunday of each month), so would you consider casting on a new charity knitting project with me?

Whether it is a hat, a pair of socks, a blanket square or a prosthetic breast our Give Back Sundays have been monthly volunteer-run events encouraging knitters to collectively make an impact on their community. We have collected hundreds of handknit socks for welcome gifts to newly homed residents of Vancouver’s modular housing units, possibly thousands of tiny newborn hats for prevention of Shaken Baby syndrome, collected soft cotton handcrafted Knitted Knockers, as well as donated hundreds of shawls, scarves and other warm items for the Downtown Eastside Womens Centre through the efforts of knitters, crocheters and even weavers who participate in our Give Back Sunday and our ongoing Warm Things Drive collections.

Not limited to knitting only on this one Sunday, we leverage this monthly event to check in and share the progress of our efforts, as well as create an opportunity to shout out for any new ideas of ways we could harness the ‘good’ in knits and other fibre art handmades. December was a whirlwind of activity, and we were able to:

• Donate over 100 handknits that were added to Christmas packages to families in need that a couple in Surrey put together after posting a Craigslist ad to help a family in need over the holidays. Along with a Kickstarter campaign where they raised over $11,000, they were able to help not one but 23 families’ holiday wishes come true. Read more about it here.
• Collect and distribute a donation of 98 hand knit hats AND 52 pairs of handknit socks to three different modular housing buildings across Vancouver.
• Added to the donation made by the amazing students of David Thompson Secondary School’s Hunger Bites project of handknits to the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre.

A few things we are currently working on:

• We are donating a number of blanket squares to the Burnaby Project Linus, along with some yarns from our Upcycling program (where we collect, sort and redistribute underloved yarns from donated stashes) to help their volunteers sew together new blankets for children in need.
• We have another Modular Housing Sock Project underway with a goal of 52 pairs of socks (of which we already have over 35 collected).

And of course we can help find homes to any donations of charity knits of all shapes and sizes as there is always a home for the love captured within a handmade fibre art. Join in from the comfort of your home any way you wish. Whether it is by knitting a scarf, crocheting a hat, weaving a shawl, or donating yarn for upcycling to any of these objectives; just join me in creating knits that do good. And if anyone is interested in leading a Zoom knit-in next month’s Give Back Sunday, drop us a line at baaadannas@gmail.com and we would be happy to partner with additional volunteers!