- Two sisters started a small knitting group after noticing the craft was disappearing
- Today, more than 60 volunteers create blankets, beanies, and toys for vulnerable people across New Zealand
- Their handmade gifts have comforted foster children, homeless people, and families escaping domestic violence
Here, Trish Stewart, 69, Ōrewa, Auckland, tells her own story in her own words.
Sitting at the kitchen table, our knitting needles clicked as my sister Sue and I nattered.
‘Isn’t it sad the younger generation don’t knit so much anymore?’ Sue, then 55, said with a sigh.
It was 2017, and aged 60, I’d been knitting and crocheting since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.
As a little girl I’d watch my aunties gathered around Mum’s kitchen table knitting, laughing and making the wrongs of the world right over cups of tea.
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No matter what worries they arrived with, they always seemed lighter by the time they left.
‘Maybe we should start a group,’ I suggested.
‘Yes,’ Sue agreed.
‘We’ll call it Yarnteeze,’ I enthused, the name a play on yarning with the aunties while drinking tea.
I reached out to a local cafe in Orewa, NZ, where I live, about hosting a weekly gathering, then invited people along on Facebook.
Slowly, over the weeks, more and more women arrived carrying knitting bags and balls of wool.
‘It’s not just about knitting and crocheting,’ one lady said four weeks in. ‘I’ve found somewhere that I feel like I belong.’
Our conversation drifted to need in the community – families struggling, women fleeing domestic violence, and homelessness.
‘We can use what we love doing to help others,’ I said.
With that, every stitch became about giving comfort and warmth, and we began making beanies, soft toys and blankets for vulnerable people.
As friendships blossomed, so did our mission, and I created a Facebook group for volunteers to access patterns, then they’d send handmade items to us for charities to distribute. We launched a website in 2013.
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Now, Yarnteeze has grown into a group of 60. We meet several times a week in three cafes with up to 30 volunteers per meet, and have other volunteers across New Zealand.
Last year we donated more than 7300 handmade items to charities, including I’ve Got Your Back Pack, Foster Hope, Woven Earth, Grandparents Parenting Grandchildren and the Catalytic Foundation.
One foster carer told us traumatised children needed blankets big enough to wrap around themselves.
‘It helps them feel safe,’ she said.
Hearing that broke my heart, so from then on, every blanket we made and donated was extra-large.
We called them cuddle blankets. Knowing a frightened child might cling to one for safety and comfort meant everything.
One day, a young mum with two little children received a blanket and read the tag – Yarnteeze, creating warmth with love.
We may not know you, but we care. She burst into tears because no-one had ever made anything for her before.
We’ve also heard from homeless people receiving beanies and mittens who say they’re reminded of their mum or nana and, for a moment, they feel the comfort of home again.
For Christmas, we make teddies, decorations and gifts to donate. Last year, one of our ladies knitted 535 small teddies.
Yarnteeze has kept an old craft alive and wrapped thousands of strangers in aroha – Maori for love.
If one blanket, beanie or pair of slippers helps someone feel warm, safe and cared for, then we’ll keep our needles clicking – continuing what my aunties did years ago – helping each other through life one stitch at a time.
Visit yarnteeze.co.nz
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