From Stranger to Friend via Yarn

It's not everyday you get to meet a wonderful soul. People who give so generously without any payment or acknowledgement in return. People, who are total strangers, but then through various encounters, become friends. People, who give me faith that the world is a wonderful place, filled with wonderful people.

I have had the absolute pleasure in meeting more and more of these very generous people. The photos above are a donation of yarn to me from two total strangers. It all started like this, I posted a little advert in a free-cycle group online. Basically asking for small donations of yarns preferably in 8ply to be used to make up scarves for our local cancer unit, knitted squares for Wrap With Love, and granny squares for SIBOL. I got a return email from a lady saying she had some ends of balls of wool for me and would I like them. A few emails back and forth and I met up with her to collect the wool. She was with a friend who she told my email to and her friend also had a little clean out and together they handed over the above huge bag of yarns. I could not photograph the lot together as you can see, and the little white clothes peg is to give you an idea of how much yarn I was given. The lady's friend had suffered cancer 16 years ago. We talked for a few minutes about knitting, the friend talked about her cancer treatment, we have each others email addresses now and I told them how blown away I was by their generosity. I will photograph the scarves to them when they are done and I explained I already had eight to take to the cancer unit to be handed out.

I have so much faith in our world, for each day it seems, I get to meet wonderfully generous people. People like Mrs Twins. People like those from Wrapped with Love who so generously continue to carry out the founder's dream. (Sonia Gidley-King recently passed away.) People that ask for nothing, however, give so very much of their love and their time to bring a little warmth and comfort to those so desperately in need. The world really is a wonderful place and it's full of the most wonderful people. Don't turn the news on each night, it's far too depressing (and currently full of election blah), just turn to your neighbour, your friend, turn to those that uplift you and you will see that there really is much love and compassion right here, right now.

These are the people our world leaders should be looking up to, these are the people we need to tell our children about and write essays for school about, these are the people that need to be on the news, teaching the rest of us how it's really done.

Thank you.