Warm The World’s volunteers are wonderful. Not only are they enthusiastic and generous, but they are very, very talented!

Just take a look at some of the blankets Warm The World has received recently:

If you receive our newsletter you read about the extremely generous donation from Mary Jackson in Indiana. She gave us sixty boxes of wool yarn. Here is some of it:

Here in Colorado the arrival of spring has also meant the arrival of wildfire season. Local readers are familiar with the horrible fire that burned through the town of Ordway. (You can read about this disaster here.) One of our board members has a contact in Ordway so Warm The World donated fifteen blankets to the survivors of the Ordway fire. It is because of our wonderful volunteers that we’re able to keep an inventory of items and are able to respond immediately to such events.

Besides knitted and crocheted items, Warm The World also accepts quilts and sewn items (like hats). Every item received will donated to a person in need. Please consider joining us.

Our monthly meeting is the third Saturday of every month. If you’re in the area, please stop by! The meetings are very informal and always a lot of fun.

As always, you can contact Warm The World by leaving a comment on this blog, emailing wtwfounder at gmail dot com or by calling 1-888-838-3044.

The volunteers that knit for Warm The World are an amazingly talented bunch of people. Here are a few of the finished items we admired at our January meeting:

In December, Warm The World received a donation of crocheted squares. Nan (our fearless leader) put the squares together and created this gorgeous afghan:

Besides knitted and crocheted items, Warm The World also accepts quilts and sewn items (like hats). Every item received will donated to a person in need. Please consider joining us.

Our monthly meeting is the third Saturday of every month. If you’re in the area, please stop by! The meetings are very informal and always a lot of fun.

As always, you can contact Warm The World by leaving a comment on this blog, emailing wtwfounder at gmail dot com or by calling 1-888-838-3044.

2007 was a year of amazing growth at Warm The World.

1047 afghans were donated, which was a 37% increase over 2006.

2754 hats/scarves were donated, which was a 46% increase over 2006.

121 volunteers joined Warm The World in 2007, which was 39% growth!

There are currently volunteers in 35 states and 251 in our home state of Colorado.

Thank you to our 308 volunteers who make everything possible! For an overview of the everything you donated in 2007, click here.

An email arrived at Warm The World recently that touched all of us and the sender of the email has given us permission to share it here:

To: Nan Sullivan (founder of Warm The World)
Subject: hexagon blanket
Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 06:36:59 -0500

Dear Nan,
I’m writing to thank you for your Christmas card because it caused
me to check out your website again. Imagine my surprise and profound
pleasure to see the afghan that was created out of my mother’s
colorful flower hexagon pieces! It was all the way at the bottom of
the “our blog” page and my sister in law and I both cried when we saw
it.

Please thank the talented and creative soul who completed it. I
feel truly touched and blessed by this act of kindness. I know this
afghan will be put to some good use but please let her know that she
has crocheted a double gift of kindness, to the receiver of the
blanket and also to us, it does my heart good to see my mother’s work
so beautifully appreciated.

May God continue to bless all of you in the caring work you do. To
paraphrase the author Tracy Kidder, people like you and the people
that work with you are a part of the “conspiracy of innocence”, it’s
made up of people who can never fully know the good they’ve done.
It’s what makes the world go round!

Have a happy, healthy, and holy new year!
In gratitude,
Dee Fulgione
Mary Fulgione

To see this beautiful blanket, click here and scroll to the end of post.

Thanks to Denise (owner of the Creative Cloth Closet in Canon City) and the Community Sewing Group that meets at her store, Warm The World was able to donate four quilts to The Wounded Warrior Battalion at Camp Pendleton in California.

This is an in patient treatment facility for soldiers with serious injuries received in Iraq and Afghanistan. Each soldier that checks into the facility receives a quilt of their own to have while they are there and they take with them when they leave.

Here are the quilts that were created by the Community Sewing Group:

Don’t forget about our monthly meetings on the third Saturday of every month. You can also contact us by leaving a comment on this blog or emailing wtwfounder at gmail dot com. If you prefer to talk to a real, live person, you can do so by dialing 1-888-838-3044.

The holiday potluck scheduled for this Saturday, December 15th, has been postponed. The regular monthly meeting will be held as usual at 11am.

When the potluck is re-scheduled, the details will be posted on this blog.

We received a wonderfully generous donation from Icelandic Designs of Longmont - seven cases of samples that just need a little fix-it work to make warm sweaters for many.  We’ll all be brushing up on our weaving skills to repair these.  If you’re interested in this project, let us know!

You’ve made it - our goal of 3,000 hats and scarves for children seemed like a huge number - and it was, but thanks to your efforts, we are there.  Here are 1,000 bagged and ready for delivery to Loaves & Fishes in Canon City.  Congratulations to everyone!

Our favorite member, Jillian, models a hat made from donated fleece and shows off two teddies that will go to a child.  As knitters and crochetiers, we had to recruit a serging expert, Nancy Lindsey, and enlist her help to turn three cases of donated polar fleece into hats and scarves for children.  This month we also received two dressed teddy bears from friends at Colorado Fiber Arts.  No matter the donation, we always find a home and make someone smile.

Our November project was shells and while we didn’t get a lot of participants, it was interesting that three unique items were submitted.

Next month’s project is “Holiday Colors” and we are sure to see a variety as just discussing it at the meeting, three people had three different ideas.  And if you’d like to work (or plan) ahead (who me?), the project for January’s meeting is cold colors and for February’s meeting will be Valentine’s, hearts or red/pink colors.

A couple times a year we combine our meeting with a little more socializing.  Our December meeting on December 15th at 11 a.m. will include a potluck luncheon, so bring your favorite dish (and a printed copy of the recipe) and plan to have a good time.  See you there!

On Monday we received a request for support of Marine Corps families displaced by the ravaging fires near Camp Pendleton north of San Diego.  Nan immediately rose to the occasion and fielded a team of volunteers who sorted, packed and shipped out 154 lap afghans, baby afghans and quilts on Wednesday.  This is possible due to the continued support we receive from volunteers who help us keep the shelves stocked for our scheduled recipients and emergency needs like this one.  Sure made all of us feel good to send love to those families.

WHOA!!!!!!  We received the following response from Walter Reed, so please do not act on the recommendation we were given:

 Walter Reed only delivers mail addressed to a particular person.  For security reasons, mail addressed to Any Soldier, Any Wounded Serviceperson, A Recovering… will not be delivered.

Below is an excerpt from a letter to Senator Hatch from the Director of Information Management at Walter Reed:

“When we process unsolicited mail, we send an acknowledgment card stating we can no longer accept it and return the mail. We currently have a backlog of unsolicited mail and it may not have been processed yet. Department of Defense policy prohibits delivery of mail not specifically addressed by name; therefore, we must return mail addressed “Any Wounded Soldier” to its sender. Walter Reed has and continues to receive tens of thousands of cards and letters in support of our Wounded Soldiers and we simply do not have the resources to open and screen each letter before delivering it. Our focus is providing world class health care to our Wounded Warriors and to continue this program we literally have to direct our medical personnel from this task. “

If you’ve received this email, please advise your contacts to not send cards.  Too bad as it sounded like a good idea.

This week we also received an email suggesting that you add the following address to your Christmas card list this year.  Just think if everyone sent one card, no soldier would go without a personal card at Christmas.  Here’s the address we were given:

 A Recovering American Soldier

c/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center

6900 Georgia Avenue NW

Washington, DC  20307-5001 

THE RIPPLE RESULTS AND NEXT MONTH’S CHALLENGE

Here’s a quick photo we took after the meeting on October 20th of the results of making October ripple month.

The theme for next month is shells - make anything in your favorite shell pattern. As we are rapidly approaching the holiday season and still need an extra push to reach our goals for hats and scarves for children, why not try incorporating shells in one of these items! Thanks for your help.