The Piggly Wiggly Blanket Appeal launched this year and in a space of three months rallied together supporters from everywhere possible, who made 267 blankets for the neediest communities as identified by Round Table Hilton 242. The Winter Knights delivered these as winter bared its teeth. Fired by a sense of achievement and the expansive deficit in poor rural KZN Midlands places, this initiative has pledged to keep on giving.
Newly dubbed Piggly Wiggly Warm Embrace, this project has gained momentum through a powerful base of supportive donors and crafters as well as a responsive and caring leader in Gill Pryke.
During the third week of June a chance meeting between Gill and Mary Gray, at Gill’s Piggly Wiggly based retail outlet Glass Cuttings, identified the need for winter warmth for the children who attend Yarrow Intermediate School in the Karkloof. This new need quickly became a new target to focus on.
Within less than a month Gill Pryke had loaded up her car with contributions from generous local knitters, crocheters and stitchers, this bundle included ten blankets made by residents of Pevensey Place in Underberg.
On the 11th July 2024, with the faint smell of runaway fires in the air and the reminder of surrounding devastation reinforced by two small planes flying overhead to keep watch on the situation, a small group of Warm Embrace representatives arrived at Yarrow School to present sixty-seven learners, aged between 5 and 14, with a beanie and blanket of their choice.
The pure gratitude for such simple necessities will fuel these formidable human wool crafting machines to do their best to meet future requests for woolly items where they are needed the most.
Pictured here top L-R: Mary Gray with Gill Pryke
Pictured below: Joyful times at Yarrow Intermediate School in the Karkloof, KZN Midlands, uMngeni
Please direct any questions and offers of assistance for Piggly Wiggly Warm Embrace to Gill Pryke on 082 254 4798.
