It was a cold winter day earlier this year in January, when forty-seven-year-old Susanne David was waiting for her car’s windscreen to defrost so she could get to work. As she waited, she was listening to the radio when something caught her attention.
It was a news piece about a proposal announced by erstwhile Home Secretary Suella Braverman to fine ‘nuisance’ rough sleepers up to £2500. Perplexed at the proposal, Susanne decided she needed to do what she could for those who might be facing homelessness or rough sleeping. She
She said: “So back in January, at the start of this year, I was sitting in my car on the drive, and it was completely frozen solid. I was shivering, bitter cold, and I was waiting for my windscreen to defrost. The radio was on and this news report came on about how the then Conservative government were wanting to criminalise rough sleeping and that they [rough sleepers] would be facing a £2,500 fine and potentially a criminal record.”
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Susanne David a fashion lecturer knit 365 hats for the homeless in less than an year.
“I sat there in that moment and I just thought, ‘my God, how can anyone think that adding more pressure on them by criminalising them would help in these situations?’ Like I’m moaning how cold I am, sitting in the car with the heater going on about to drive to work, and I’ve just come out of my lovely warm house, and there’s people who’ve slept on the street last night. I don’t know why but it really, really, impacted me and I thought this has got to change, society has got to change,” she said.
Susanne’s desire to change the situation was strong but she didn’t know what she could do as a single person. However, as the Fashion and Art Lecturer at Gower College drove to work angry, and brainstorming for ideas, it suddenly struck her that the answer was with her all along. For the latest Swansea news, sign up to our newsletter here
She said: “Then I thought, What’s the point of being angry? What can I do? And then I thought, you know what? I’m going to do something positive. I’m going to do something, and I’ve just had my knitting machine for Christmas, a little treat, so I’m going to knit a hat a day for the homeless.”
And that is how the 365 Hats for the Homeless Challenge was born, where Susanne decided to knit a hat a day for 365 days for the homeless. Even though she had decided on what she wanted to do, Susanne did not believe her challenge would gather a large number of supporters.
She said: “It literally just mushroomed. I put a little post on my personal social media. I just said I heard this news story in the morning… but that’s it now, I’m going to do a year of kindness, and I am pledging that I’m going to knit 365 caps, one cap a day. I just couldn’t believe the response from friends and family on social media, I was completely blown away. Like people were messaging me and saying, ‘Susanne, that’s amazing. How can I help? I can’t knit, but can I give you wool?”
It was at this point that Susanne realised that her challenge could turn into something bigger. She explained: “I was getting so many people saying, ‘can I give wool?’ that I was thinking, wow, actually, this could be a whole community effort now, it doesn’t just need to be me.”
She added: ”So, I thought about how people could get wool to me because people would buy all sorts of wool. So I thought, I will go on Amazon, I’ll create a wish list of all of those wool that would be good for the hat and I’ll share it. I set up a separate Facebook page called 365 Hats so that people who want to get involved can follow that and they can access what I’m doing there.”
Susanne’s supporters donated a total of 37 kgs of wool. -Credit:Susanne David
However, Susanne could not have anticipated how much wool came in from her supporters. A total of 37 kg of wool was donated by Susanne’s supporters throughout the challenge. She said: “I could not believe the cartons that started arriving. Literally, the poor Amazon driver turned up at my house every day. I think he thought that I was running a business. He’d come with like all these massive cardboard boxes and it was so emotional. Just the wool started pouring in, like I’d be going to work, and there would be boxes of wool that were left on my desk for me and it just kept coming and coming.”
Susanne wanted to make sure everyone involved was acknowledged in the challenge and so came up with an innovative solution. She explained: “So what I thought was right, everyone needs to be part of this now. This isn’t just about me, this is about a community now. So what I did was I bought these little hanging labels, little brown tags, got a stamp made, that said the 365 Hats. And I stamped every single tag on there and wrote a little personal note for the recipient saying, ‘you matter to us’, and then on the back I wrote that knitted by Susanne David wool given by the name of whoever gave the wool. So every single hat had someone’s name on there and a personal message to the recipient.”
Susanne made sure that those receiving the hats had a choice though, as in her own words everyone deserves to be ‘stylish’. She said: “My feeling was that just because you are homeless, doesn’t mean you don’t want to be stylish, and I thought I’d really style them up. So I would knit some striped ones, some blocked ones — all of them with handmade bobbles as well on a little pompom maker. For some of them, when it was coming up to St David’s day I thought I’m going to make some Welsh ones, so I made Welsh flag ones, when it was St. Patrick’s Day, I’d do some St. Patrick’s Day one.
“Then I had some Black Wool from friends, and then another friend had sent some white wool so I thought I’ll do some Swans and some Ospreys ones because they might be swans or Ospreys supporters. I did some quirky ones, like I had some really odd coloured wool donated, and I thought, okay, I’ll do a Dennis the Menace type one, because they might’ve been into that,” she added.
Susanne completed her target of 365 hats well before her deadline, in 318 days often knitting three at a time while staying up until 1 in the night. Although, she confesses it wasn’t always easy.
She said: “I’ve got to be honest, it was really difficult through the summer because obviously I’ve got a young daughter who’s eight, she’s off in the summer and, I’m a lecturer, so I am off too. So when trying to get them done whilst she was off school, like in the evenings because obviously, kids stay up later, I found I wasn’t getting out here[to knit] some nights to like 11:00 at night and then had to knit to like 1:00 in the morning.”
Though completing her challenge before time, Susanne says she was never a big fan of knitting. She explained: “Believe it or not, this is where this is such a funny twist of fate. When I did my degree in university, I did a fashion degree, and one of the modules that you had to do was knitwear — and I hated it…but then weirdly, I saw in a Facebook reel, a circular knitting machine which someone was like hand cranking. I thought, oh, that looks quite interesting.”
Susanne made sure to knit different styles of hats. -Credit:Susanne David
“I’m always looking for new things to teach my fashion students. So I thought, on Christmas, I’m going to treat myself to a knitting machine and I did Christmas. So I bought myself a circular knitting machine and knit a hat for my daughter which she absolutely loves. So I would just sit here [her studio] in the nights with my 12 Netflix films. I’d just sit here and I’d just crank away just watching the telly,” she added.
Susanne jokes that she has one arm more muscular than the other due to all the spinning she had to do on her knitting machine, and that it did hurt sometimes to keep on knitting. She also explained that some family emergencies did prompt her to take a break in between, but the thought of who she was knitting for gave her hope. She said: “So then I was thinking, why have I put this pressure on myself? Literally every time I felt that this is a lot of pressure, I thought that I’m doing it for someone who’s sleeping rough. That’s what you just got to remember. You’re sitting in your warm studio watching Netflix, knitting. It’s not really hard, is it? So, yeah, it brought me back down to Earth.”
All of the 365 hats knitted by Susanne will go to the Matthew’s House in Swansea, a charity working for the homeless. Susanne’s only wish is that their recipients know that the hats were made with love.
She said: “I really hope it will make them feel seen and cared for, that’s what I really hope. I really hope that the person who gets the hat reads that handwritten label that says ‘you mattered to us’, and they really, truly believe that they do matter to us. That someone has taken the time, number one, to buy the wool number two, knit the hat for them and think about the colours, the patterns. I really have to be honest, I literally poured love into each one of those hats.”
Susanne added: “Every single hat I knitted, I made sure that it was a hat worthy of a person. You know, one that I would expect to fly off a shop. You know, a bespoke hat, every single hat. I didn’t cut corners, every hat was double lined, double layered… so they were extra warm because I wanted it to be that, they would get a really beautiful, well-made item that would make them feel in some way important or special or that they mattered, really, and I think they’ll feel that when they get them.”