Happy post-Thanksgiving slumber! Today I’d like to share with you a little of what I’m thankful for. Over the past half year my teen aged daughter and I have been volunteering with a soup kitchen in the Downtown East Side and this weekend we were able to witness our first Thanksgiving meal handout and it was a moving experience. The Dugout is a grassroots non-profit that upcycles food from various grocery stores with the help of an army of volunteers. Last Monday a group from the Athletics Advisory Club at SFU came as a collective to join some regular volunteers and staff to give back to their community by manning this event. The Dugout shared some photos from the event on their social media that I am reposting as a picture is worth a thousand words [of thanks].

Over the same weekend I had crossed paths with a producer from The Cowichan Sweater: Our Knitted Legacy documentary that we got to work with when we hosted our Pay It Forward Briggs and Little Roving yarn drive. I asked if the community was interested in additional resources from our Upcycle Program and she was able to connect with someone who is interested in starting up a knit club and teach new knitters in their community. I put a call-out asking for help in getting some donations to Vancouver Island on our socials and within an hour we had 8 different offers for a ride to take our care-package from East Van to Duncan by the end of the week! So this package of yarn, needles and notions is now on its way to strengthening additional fibre arts communities; a perfect cumulation of gifting, caring and support over a weekend dedicated to reflecting on gratitude.

In other news it’s time for a SOCTOBER update, and it’s an odd one: to date we have collected ZERO sock donations at the mid-month point! Last year the uptake was exponential as the month progressed so I am not too worried, but it seems like a good time for an extra call out!

We are collecting socks for those in need and I will be passing them along to the Dugout in November to distribute within their community. These need not be handknit socks; in fact store-bought socks are hardy and easily washable, and also disposable. Quality sock packs from Costco or Marks Work Wearhouse, or quantity socks from Amazon are all welcome and have their place in meeting the needs from organizations such as this.

Not to mention that last year we collected 430 pairs (of which only 15 were handknit!), and we hoped to surpass that goal this year. If you have the ability to make a donation to our sock drive please feel free to drop some off in store or you can keep it simple as last year we received a number of donations directly shipped by mail as well (our mailing address can be easily googled)!

If anyone knows the value to keeping warm and cozy, it is certainly an army of fibre artist, am I right?