Page 50 - Let's Get Crafting Knitting & Crochet - Issue 118 (January 2020)

I Left My Heart in…

San Francisco (actually, it was a fower!)

How random acts of crochet
kindness are the latest way to
show a stranger you care

Words by Heidi Wilkins

What started as one young
woman’s mission to manage her
own mental health issues has
touched thousands of crafters in
the UK and around the world. With
Random Acts of Kindness Day
approaching next month we
couldn’t wait to find out more!

Imagine you’re making your way home project to leave a
ater a busy day. The bus is packed. It’s handmade lower for
raining and you’re tired. Out of the someone every day to
corner of your eye you spot a brightly ind and hopefully cheer them
coloured object tucked into your seat. up. “I really think that if someone
On closer inspection it’s a beautiful is having a bad day, inding a litle
crocheted lower and atached is a tag crocheted item can be enough to Find Random Acts of Crochet
that reads, ‘I’m not lost, just alone, if turn their day around.” Kindness on Facebook and get
I make you smile, take me home.’ She began sharing her eforts on involved in their Flower Wall project
A small and unexpected gesture like social media and before long had by sending crocheted or knitted
flowers to 7 Brookside Gardens,
this can make people contacting her Bishops Wood, Staffordshire, ST19 9AL
someone’s day. We “My mental health wanting to do the
live in an age when same. And so, the
the news can be was really being Random Acts of The irst item Ella crocheted for
negative and our impacted by the Crochet Kindness the cause was a lower, which led
hectic lives oten Facebook group was her to create her own patern ‘The
take a toll on our news and social born and now has Kindness Flower’ for the group’s
physical and mental media and I over 6,000 members! Flower Wall Project. The three friends
well-being. Random Craters are plan to create a wall of blooms in
acts of kindness wanted to bring encouraged to leave a Loughborough. Each lower will have a
recognise that some brightness note of kindness as blank label, so individuals can pick one,
having someone, well as details about write a message and pass it on as an act
even a stranger, into the world” the Facebook group of kindness. “I really want to encourage
ofering a on the tag so that people to stop and think about who in
compassionate thought can bring receivers can contact the group to say their lives might need a pick-me-up, or
smiles to faces, and warm hearts thanks if they wish to. to just do a kind thing for a stranger,”
throughout the world. Olivia’s friends, Ella Clarke and says Olivia.
In August 2019, Olivia Fletcher Holly Donaghy-Suton, manage So what’s the most unusual
from Leicestershire started leaving the social media group with her. crocheted item that group members
crocheted lowers in random places for “It continues to amaze me how many have shared? Ella reveals all. “Someone
people to ind. The 23 year-old says, people are geting involved and how recently crocheted pigs in blankets
“my mental health was really being much of an impact it is having,” says which I thought was super cool and
impacted by the news and social media Ella. Clearly there is a desire among festive! There was also someone who
and I wanted to bring some brightness craters to bring love and light into crocheted a Cornish pasty to leave in
into the world.” So she began a 100-day the world of people around them. Cornwall.” Many craters also made

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