Charities, hospitals and primary schools have benefitted from thousands of knitted items made and donated by the Team Naenae Knitting Natters charity group.

Items made for Pregnancy Help and Foster Hope include baby jackets, jerseys and vests, cot and bassinet blankets, cotton facecloths, child-sized jerseys and jackets, as well as beanie/scarf/fingerless glove sets and slippers for seven local primary schools.

They also make woollen hearts for Te Omanga Hospice, Twiddlemuffs (hand muffs designed for dementia patients) and baby blankets for Hutt City and Wellington hospitals, and adult garments for The Red Cross Refugee Support Programme.

Knitting Natters is one of the first groups to use the Council’s new Te Mako Naenae Community Centre.

Council's Neighbourhood and Communities Director Andrea Blackshaw says the new community facility is about bringing people together and creating better social cohesion.

"The Naenae community asked for a place in the town centre to gather and connect, and to make memories, and Te Mako is delivering on that."

Since 2020, when Knitting Natters started keeping robust records, the group has made and donated 11,097 items.

This year alone, they have made 3108 items and are on course to break last year’s record total of 3121.

Spokesperson Chris Dopson says the group has around 45 to 50 members, of which about 25 attend the weekly Wednesday knit-fest at Te Mako. The rest choose to knit from home. There are also three other informal groups who are connected to Knitting Natters and knit remotely.

"We gather up donated resources from the community - yarn, needles, patterns, haberdashery and the like - and use them to make new items which are returned to the community where there is a need.

"It’s a form of recycling, a creative endeavour, a social occasion, a sharing of skills, and a help to those who need it."

Pregnancy Help spokesperson Sandra Scott has seen first-hand the positive impact of Knitting Natters’ creations.

"Their lovely knitted items have helped hundreds of Wellington’s most vulnerable families keep their babies warm. We are so grateful for this wonderful group, who partner with us in our work. "

Dopson has been a Knitting Natters member since 2012. She says it’s incredibly rewarding.

"We get social interaction, friendship, a creative outlet, an increase in skills, a sense of serving the community, and satisfaction around using resources that would otherwise go to waste."

Dopson says the wool is provided free to the group, most often sourced by word of mouth or through appeals to the community through posters, leaflet drops and connecting with other community organisations such as Hutt Timebank and Crafting Threads of Aroha.

"And over the last two years we received grants from two charitable organisations of $1000 and $500 respectively to buy wool."

When money is available, the policy is to buy wool through New Zealand-owned retail businesses and, whenever possible, to buy Kiwi-made wool.

Naenae Knitting Natters was started in 2011 by then Hutt City Councillor Lisa Bridson, with former Team Naenae Trust (TNT) coordinator Mel Yaxley.

Brisdon was a trustee of TNT which was looking for activities to engage and benefit the community. She enjoyed knitting and suggested creating the group. TNT trustees agreed and the group was formed.

It was designed to be a community activity to foster social benefits for group members and provide community benefit by using donated yarn to make items, initially for KidsCan, and eventually for other charities.

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