In the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was attending Carleton Univeristy in Ottawa, playing varsity hockey, studying journalism online and living in on-campus residence, isolated with my roommates.

With the desire to give back in some way to the Ottawa community around Christmas, I came up with the idea to make knitted hockey socks into hats - I soon learned that idea wasn’t going to be too feasible. Instead, I was told to try simply using fleece - so I did just that!

Before leaving for univeristy, my grandma had given me her old sewing machine so I could sew scrunchies as a pandemic hobby, so I taught myself how to sew throughout the summer/fall.

I set a goal to make 30 hats and mittens to hand out in the Byward Market before Christmas and to raise $100. I posted a video with these details on my social media account, and that is when it all began.

The next day, I had hundreds of dollars in donations already, and the word quickly spread through my hockey team, and soon to media outlets around the city. That is when things took off!

I went and bought some fabric, got to work, and the rest is history!