DFW Fiber Fest 2024 - Charitable Giving

Every year, DFW Fiber Fest allows various charities to set up shop, so to speak.  For several years the locally-headquartered Warm Up America! has been co-hosted in the vendor hall information booth, and this year they were given their own space.  As previously reported, I took quite a few items to donate.  I debated whether to switch to a large duffle bag but decided that might entice me to bring back more yarn than I need,* so I decided to pack into the suitcase (unfortunately, not an expanding type) and a couple of totes, one of which looks enough like an oversized purse that I could carry it on the plane as my personal item.**

I also took these two sleepy kittens which a friend is collecting for her local library's Welcome Baby project.  I made them out of scraps of dishcloth cotton plus a bit of acrylic for the light purple face:

The pattern says to use DK weight yarn and mine
are of worsted, since that is what I have handy.

I made sure to get a photo of the luggage before unpacking:

Saturday night I spent a couple hours post-supper relaxing to videos and running in ends and making sure everything has tags.  I tried to photograph them by groups, but a couple items hid under other things so are in a different group.

These are blanket pieces.  WUA takes 7"x9" pieces and has
volunteers sew them into blankets.  I was trying stitches.

Eighteen hats - the nineteenth was hiding under scarves.

Four shawls, assorted sizes and shapes.

Eleven of the scarves.

Three hat-and-scarf sets.  The middle one is of a handdyed
acrylic I purchased at DFW Fiber Fest two years ago.

One more hat, a pair of mittens (also handdyed yarn), and a
striped pair I decided I don't like enough to keep.

These scarves were still in a drawer when I took the other photo.

My total is 2 blanket pieces, 19 hats, 3 hat-and-scarf sets, one hat-and-mittens set, one large pair of mittens, 13 scarves, and four shawls.  Most have a label from the yarn; a few have printed washing instructions.  I had an old worn-out duffle I'd left with friends that one brought to me, and I packed everything into it.  I was surprised that they all fit!  I printed a donation form and marked everything included.  So when I walked up with the donation, the volunteers offered to unpack and I said they didn't have to do it, I was happy to donate the duffle as it couldn't be used as luggage reliably.  One started to ask me to fill out a form and I pulled out the one I had, which was in an outside pocket.  They got very excited as I had written the number of each item on the form - the volunteers told me many people just do a checkmark at the type of donation.  Hey, it's not my first donation!

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* Not that I truly need yarn, you understand, but there are show colourways to collect.  And so on.

** Handily, it plus my computer bag fit under the seat in front of me, always my preference since I don't like struggling to reach into an overhead bin if I can avoid it.