Further Results of the Working Bee - Jan 23rd, 2016

I continue to be amazed at the donations that we are receiving every day. About 10 days ago a lady brought in a large bag of knitted items that she said was “just from a group of knitters”. When we got to sort it on Saturday, we discovered over 100 pairs of mittens of all different children’s sizes plus a huge assortment of other knitted goods. Another women had purchased one of our Thrum Mitten Kits and kindly brought the completed mittens in last week for the donation basket. The batch of donations that we sorted on the weekend even included blankets received from a wonderful group of afghan crocheters in Sedona, Arizona, going to the extra effort and expense to ship them to us here in Canada. You are all wonderful.
When I was presenting our work to the meeting of Private Sponsor Refugee Groups a couple of weeks ago, I boldly (yet with fingers crossed) announced that we were aiming to receive 1 000 donations of handcrafted accessories and blankets to offer the Syrian refugees coming to Kingston. At the time it seemed hard to comprehend what 1000 donations could look like, and where would they all come from?
Well with a drum roll, I’m here to announce that as of Saturday’s count we have 601 articles donated and ready for distribution. And that does not yet include more that we know will be arriving from Lindsay ON later in the week, and another batch from NY, nor does it count the 30 or so blankets that we didn’t have time to finish processing on Saturday. All this to say that it’s a safe bet that we will be needing another sorting day in a couple of weeks and that we are very likely to reach our goal of 1 000 donations, and beyond.
Next Sorting Get Together is scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 6th from 1-3pm but please remember to RSVP to avoid disappointment as we can only take so many willing hands.
 THANKS TO ALL WHO HAVE CONTRIBUTED.

Donations pouring in...Keep 'em coming

Just an update to let you know how things are going for the  Kingston Stitches for Syrians campaign.
We've had an unbelievable response from the local community, which was to be expected as the Kingston area crafters really do seem to step up to support any of the causes that we've shared with them in the past. But more suprisingly,  via internet connections, we will also be receiving donations from 4 American crafting groups and a group from Lindsay ON.

Last week we had a visit from Mandy Marciniak from the Kingston Heritage newspaper and she wrote an excellent article about the project. We're hoping that this spreads the word even more to help us meet our target of 1 000 hand knitted items that we can hand over to the folks at the Kingston Immigration Partnership who are coordinating donations.

Hats for children and adults seem to be the most popular donations but we still need a good number of all articles: mitts, scarves and neck warmers, socks and slippers, Izzy dolls, sweaters and blankets.

Last Saturday we had our first of 2 (or maybe 3) working Bees to label and package the knitted donations we've received. We had 4 super workers (I would never call them drones) who helped out with sorting and bagging. Thanks a million to Gail, Cheryl, Amelia and her Mom (sorry, didn’t get your name).
We processed and bagged a total of 242 donations  with another 22 blankets left to go with the next group.  In fact the system and the workers who made it happen were so efficient that we decided that it would best to move the next Working Bee until Sat. Jan. 23rd with another one in early Feb. if necessary.
If you wish to join us, please RSVP as more than 5 people working around the tables would be cumbersome. Keep those donations coming in.
We are hoping to have the bulk of the donations received by the end of January but will certainly continue to accept until the end of February (with an extra day this year too!)
We’ll be dropping off our first load on Wednesday, Jan. 13th when we  meet with the Kingston Immigration Partnership. We're hoping to have a more precise idea if anything else is required after that. We’ll keep you posted.

Thanks for all the support so far. 
Anne (for Jean and Sally, too)