The kindness of bloggers

A while back, Norma asked people to write about what motivated them to knit for the Red Scarf Project. For me, it was because I never received care packages when I was in college, so I know how hard it can be when everyone else is getting them (especially freshman year). When I posted this comment, Norma, being the dear, sweet person that she is, asked me for my snail mail address. A little while later, I received this in the mail:

Item 1: Impossible floating jam. Tasty enough to blow up your kitchen over. Seriously. If I had to blow up my own kitchen to get more of this jam, I would.

Items 2 and 3: Sugar and Cream cotton yarn with which to make Mason-Dixon's infamous, addictive washcloth

Item 4: Chocolate from Norma's sister's shop. The best damn chocolate this side of the Atlantic. Go, buy some.

Item 5: Notecard, image of Blue Moon yarns on front, photography by Cara Davis

Item 6: A Rhinebeck Bingo button (it's sooo cool I get a souvenir of the world-renowned Rhinebeck Festival when I didn't even get a chance to go!)

It's funny, this blogging community that we have. Norma wouldn't know me if she passed me on the street, and yet, here she sent me this lovely package and I probably communicate more with her than I do with most of my own family (which is pretty sad, really, since by "communicate" I mean "leave comments on her blog"). And I have read many, many accounts of bloggers who are in need in some way, and other bloggers have come to their rescue. And even when I have a terrible day and I feel just awful and I have had a bad experience and I write about it here, I get words of encouragement from people I "don't know" in the conventional sense. And I truly care about the people I have met in the blogosphere.

What is it about this "place" that makes us all so caring, so honest, so giving? Is it just that knitters and crocheters in general are those kind of people? You have only to look at the Yarn Harlot's Knitter's Without Borders drive to know that knitters are incredibly generous with whatever resources they have. How is it that in this world where people are so often cruel to each other that there is this little oasis of comfort and beauty of the human spirit? And why can't we see more of such goodness and kindness on the news instead of the senseless violence that predominates? Maybe the answer is to take away everyone's guns and hand them knitting needles and a ball of yarn.