Sferruzzare sociale: a close knit community

Using yarn to counter social injustice

I am the kind of person that tries thousands of different hobbies but never follows through on any of them. Crocheting hits me differently: the gesture, the manual skills involved, the fact that you can do other activities while crocheting, and finally, the idea of creating something real, useful, with your own body, led crochet to be one of the hobbies I still follow today.

This journey started in 2023 in Casatenovo, a small town between Milan and Lecco, when the association RIFUGIO, in collaboration with Carolina Romano, started a new project called “Sferruzzare Solidale” (Knitting in solidarity). The goal was simple yet ambitious: create a community of knitters and crochetters to make blankets that could be donated to persons experiencing homelessness. The idea came from another cooperative that operates all over Italy, SHEEP Italia, which gathers suggestions and helps in the initial phases of the workshops. Every two weeks, RIFUGIO would organize a workshop in a cultural space, where more than 40 people met and worked together, creating a community that has grown during the years.

SHEEP Italia is a NGO founded in 2019 that works in the human rights field, with four different projects: blankets for people experiencing homelessness, Sheep Dream (emergency shelter to keep warm people during winter), Borse Lavoro (a training course for women in socio-economical fragilities), and training courses for knitting and crocheting. A person or association can contact them to start one of the projects in their own city. SHEEP Italia helps in the first phases of the creation of the community, as well as during the project and for collecting the finished blankets.

When I first entered this world made of colors and joy, I wasn’t even able to keep the crochet in my hands. However, after a couple of lessons, I created my first granny square, a basic square model that, when combined with many others, can create different patterns, such as blankets. If not for the people around me, I wouldn’t have been able to make even the easiest stitch. But through a community with a common goal and interest, I, together with the rest of the group, actively helped in the creation of more than 70 blankets (just in the first year of activity!) then donated to those in need.

During these workshops, I had the pleasure to talk to and share ideas with Carolina Romano, the mind behind the activity. We touched on many issues, such as gender, environmental and social factors. But how does it really work? Is it easy to start a project this big and impactful? Can manual skills be a way to create a community against modern problems?

One of the first steps is to get the wool and yarn to do the work, and this is the first step of the creation of the community: using the “gomitolo sospeso” (suspended yarn) method it is possible to collect the basic material through donation. The process is really easy, shops and stands at the markets can have a box where customers can leave yarn that is collected and donated to the association. This easy yet effective action cuts the enormous cost of yarn purchasing, at the same time creating curiosity among citizens. During the second half of 2025 different boxes were left around Casatenovo, in order to get yarn and granny squares, and more than a thousand (1000!) were collected by the end November.

Then the real workshop starts. People gather in a space and start to share their own skills, helping those who aren’t used to it. At the beginning of the project, around 50 people were participating in each meeting, with many others working from home. Regarding age, the community was heterogeneous, but there was (and still is) a prevalence of women. This was one of the first discussions I had with Carolina: Knitting is for women. Nothing more wrong than this affirmation. As Carolina said:

“During WWII men were sent to the frontline to fight, and women were working in factories. Clothes are necessary in our daily life, and lots of women were working in these factories to keep up the production. But who decided this is a female activity? It is hard to break this stereotype and to get closer to the male world”.

Breaking this dichotomy, where female activities are differentiated from male activities, is one of the reasons why the workshop is open to everyone.

“It is not only about manual skills and creating clothes or blankets, it’s about smashing stereotypes”.

In 2025 the community expanded, and Carolina collaborates with 3 other locations: Merate and Nibionno (in two nursing homes) and Giussano (in a library). Casatenovo remains the most participated with a higher number of youth, while in the new locations the elderly are the majority. Women are the predominant group everywhere, showing how difficult it is to attract a male audience.

The gender issue is just one among many others I discussed with Carolina. For example, studies show that manual work helps to reduce stress, improve creativity and release endorphins: so-called “knitting therapy”. The community has recently started a new project: “progetto TINtacoli” (tentacles). The goal is to make small octopus, filled with cotton, and donate them to the Monza hospital. The octopus are placed in the cribs of premature children to help them during the growth - the tentacles reproduce the shape and consistency of the umbilical cord, helping the delicate phase the children are subjected to. Over 200 octopuses were given to the hospital in the last year. For both those who work on the project and those who receive pieces, there are positive emotional impacts. Whether it’s a gift, an octopus or a blanket, any work can improve mental health. Especially working with people with socio-economical fragilities, it can create a network that can be very impactful in their lives.

Knitting can increase more public consciousness about the effect our lifestyle has on the planet, many tonnes of unsold clothes are thrown away every year, leaving a huge impact on the environment. Creating our own clothes raises awareness about the issue and could lead us to take better care of what we have in our wardrobe.

“In a world that is fast, crocheting and knitting slow down the process, both mentally and manually”.

Fast fashion is killing planet Earth, not only because of waste produced by the industry, but also the impact on the life of people living in precarious conditions, forced to work in unsafe environments, with harmful chemicals for low wages. The industry rewards quantity over quality, flattening diversity and homogenising colours.

“When you make your own garment you need to pay attention to all the details, even a small error can change the final shape. Something that a machine does not do”.

Manual skills can fix an old or broken dress, avoiding more pollution through reparations. Creating our own clothes helps us to really understand the work behind it, we take care of it in a different way.

Furthermore, wool, cotton, silk and polyester are not the only materials we can craft with. There are plenty of others that can be used: hemp and banana fibers are the most versatile and least impactful, yet expensive and difficult to find in common stores. Moreover, silk is not vegan, while wool could be if it is sheared in an ethical way, not harming the animals. Cotton, hemp and banana fibers are always vegan and have a lower impact on the environment than chemical fibers like polyester.

During the first year more than 70 blankets were donated to people experiencing homelessness in Milan, with the help of the City Angels (a NGO active in Italy and Switzerland that helps people with backgrounds of fragility, mainly living or working in the streets, such as people experiencing homelessness, people with a refugee background, people with drug addictions ect..). Carolina took part during one of these distributions, revealing the effectiveness of the project. The blankets are a way to reach difficult situations, creating a network that can improve, and even save, the lives of people.

“We first ask the name and if they want anything to drink or eat. Then we let them decide their favourite blanket among the ones we are giving. Giving a person a choice, even when they have none, it’s touching. You’re not there to blame anyone, we don’t know their stories and it’s not important to know it. Giving human love is the only thing we can do at that moment”.

In 2025, 100 blankets were donated to Lecco City Angels, and more than 75 to Milan. Carolina also points out that:

“it is hard to reach everyone, especially in the province. It is easier to work in cities where there is already a pre-existing network”. “I saw faces and people and heard stories that changed my life. Even a simple blanket could mean everything for those that own nothing”.

Of course, people that are experiencing homelessness are neither passive nor helpless. All we can do is to offer what we have and what we make, without any judgment.

What the community has done doesn’t stop here. During Christmas, in December 2025, different decorations were created and placed in the main square of Casatenovo. The main piece is a tree made of granny squares. It is a trend that is growing all around Italy lately - the biggest tree was made in Orta di Atella (Naples).

In January 2025, during a pro-Palestine event held in Casatenovo, Carolina dedicated a workshop exclusively on Tatreez, a traditional needlework method from Palestine. We could talk about it for hours, but what is important is to know that this method is unique for each Palestinian village, and supports Palestine citizens, mainly women. During the 1987 Intifada women worked on their dresses to express a political and cultural resistance against Israeli oppression. Different geometric patterns, between sentences and phrases, Palestinian flags, guns, animals and boats were embroidered to the clothes. Similar traditional forms of manual work can also be found in the Ukrainian, Native North American, Aboriginal Australian and New Zealand cultures. Knowing and sharing the knitting and sewing cultures of oppressed populations is a way to support the people keeping their traditions alive.

Another significant project is the creation of hats and gloves for the refugees of the Balkan migration route. In collaboration with the NGO No Name Kitchen, the community is deciding whether to create and donate tools to help in the extreme winter conditions that affect the Balkan area. During cold winters, refugees, mostly coming from Syria, are obliged to live in woods close to the EU countries borders, in extreme conditions that often lead to death.

“These clothes must be dark and warm to avoid detection and freezing. We are not sure we will have the capability to follow all the projects and have good outputs: the limited participation and the quantity of yarns does not allow us to do it at the moment. I hope it will be possible in the future, but we are still discussing it”.

Crocheting and knitting are not only an original and trendy way of making our own clothes. They can create community and share repressed traditions and information spreading awareness on the current situation of the world. Even a simple hobby that we can start in our bedroom or at the local cultural centre can improve others and our lives a lot. Creating leads to destruction: the creation of a community, of clothes, of awareness and of a safe space brings the destruction of stereotypes, oppression, and wastes. Colours against darkness, community against individualism, tradition against oppression, slow against fast.

Even if the creation of blankets was the main goal at the beginning of the project, the community grew and opened the vision, welcoming other topics in a perfect blend. The future of the community will be decided by people for people. Finding such communities is not always simple and intuitive, but with in-depth research it is possible to join them in most of the medium and big cities. Even if it could seem just a hobby, being part of these projects it’s fundamental in the creation of communities that fights against injustices and that could lead to participation and information processes. Some suggestions to find local communities are: through social media, flyers, posters or friends, but even visiting wool shops could be useful.

Now that we have all the tools necessary to understand why and how to be part of these social movements, we only miss the final step: join a crochet community!