The biggest thing that I've done with these is usually during the colder holiday months when I give them to charities! For a couple years I was only giving these to my mom's friend (who's like another mom/aunt to me) who went on trips with her students (she's a Microbiologist and a professor at a college around where I live) to Nicaragua. They would take these down there, along with some flannel tie blankets my mom and I made, and the people they would help/check up on every year would take them and use them! It was fun for a few years, but after those few years I felt kind of selfish because I was upset that I never heard back if my scarves really made a difference or not. Like, yeah, word of mouth wise I did from my mom's friend, but I never SAW them use it. No photos, nothing. I still sent them every year, but there was that nagging voice in the back of my head wondering if they even received them or not.
Until one year, when all that good karma, over the 6+ years I sent these scarves away, came back. I was sent a power point, made by the students who went on the trip, to thank me for my 6 years of giving to the people down in Nicaragua. I was a junior in high school whenever I received this, and you BET I was in tears when I flipped through those slides. I finally got to see how they were using the scarves I had sent them. Now, keep in mind, these people were in a rain forest/tropic area. So they didn't exactly use them as scarves, per say. But the women/nurses tied their hair up with them, little girls made their dolls wear them, the kids themselves wore them, even boys wore them as headbands and pretended they were pirates. Even the flannel blankets my mom and I made were used as burp rags, sweat rags, blankets for dolls and babies, etc. Those same people sent me a homemade paper magnet. There were photos in the power point showing me how they made it and everything. The kids that received my scarves made this magnet for me. And it's been in my bathroom hanging on the mirror ever since. It's a constant reminder that I've done good things and I've brought happiness to someone else's life and helped in some way or another, and it's also a reminder that, even if you don't see it right away, the ones you give to really do appreciate what you've done for them. I've been making them every year, during the holidays, ever since.
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Scarf before it's been stretched out
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Another charity thing I try and do every year is give to the less fortunate locally. One year, my grandma's dentist office had a "mitten tree" that people could bring mittens, scarves, hats, gloves, etc. and hang it on the tree to be given to the homeless/less fortunate. I had a vertical laundry hamper heaping with my scarves, so I donated ALL of them to that mitten tree. There were so many that they circled the tree TWICE with all of my scarves (you couldn't even see the tree, really. It was awesome). These scarves have gone everywhere and helped so many people, it's almost impossible for me not to give them away around the holidays.
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| Scarf stretched out during the process |
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| Finished finger-knitted scarf |
This year, I've made it a challenge for myself to make at LEAST one scarf per day in December. This way I can give these as gifts (as money is sort of tight this year for present-giving), I can send them to charities, or I can just hand them out whenever to whoever would like one. When I was younger I would sell these at garage sales, but now I don't think I could charge for them unless 100% of the money were to go to some sort of charity. I hope someday, when I have an online store, I can sell these scarves and have all the profits go to a different charity every year, month, whatever it may be. Giving back to others has always been a big thing for me, and I hope that someday I can make these scarves a big deal and give a lot of money (or scarves!) to a charity who needs it. Right now, it's only a holidays thing, though.
My goal is to give to charity somehow every year, and this year December is the month I'll be giving! I hope by reading this you'll feel the urge to give to a charity, or just do a random act of kindness, whatever suits you! I know sometimes it can feel that your giving isn't doing a lot, but it took 6 years for me to realize how much it actually makes an impact in someone else's life, and with enough people giving and being kind to one another, we can really make a difference in the world! <3
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