Valentine Project - yarn bomb!

Here's a plain one, ready for dropping off.

I'm excited about Valentine's Day for the first time in my life. I'm going to do a small scale yarn bomb around town when I'm on my lunch break that day. Cute little crochet hearts here and there for people to find and smile about.

Why yarn bomb on valentines (besides all of the people who are often sad on this holiday)? Last weekend a friend mentioned something about a blogger she follows doing something similar and it got my wheels turning. At work/church last year we did a "I Heart My Church" promotion that attempted to build our church's unity. I had hoped that instead of the narcissistic sounding "I love my church" thing we'd do something a bit more community focused this year but in lieu of having a pastor this February, we're not doing anything this month. Our logo tagline is "Seeking, Serving, Sharing" and I thought these hearts would be a pretty good way of sharing. Anyway, when I came across this blogger's idea about heart yarn bombing on Valentine's Day and putting little tags on the bombs that referred the finder to various social media outlets, well, add that to the social media development focus I've been on at work for the last several weeks, and I figured the idea had merit and I started to get excited.

Wish I'd heard about this earlier so I could have made more heart. I mean, there's only so much that I can do for this project with less than a week to prepare. Last night after small group concluded we started talking and before long I had revealed what I was doing and had asked them if they wanted to help me distribute some of the hearts I had made (only had around 20 to share last night). They were willing to add their own cards to the yarn bombs because I hadn't finished them, and surprisingly everyone in the class (only about nine other people) took one or two of them to leave somewhere on Friday. I hold little hope of finding out what happens to these little things when they get dropped off. I just hope that they are an encouragement to the people who find them.

Maybe for next year I can help coordinate a full scale "cover the city" with love campaign - boost our social media by putting #FBCZ on the cards, pushing people who find the hearts to tweet a photo using the hashtag with hopes of generating more interest in FBCZ as a whole and ultimately bringing glory to God. Hopefully by next year at this time we will have... ok, "I" will have figured out how better to use social media to connect with people where they are. And it would be fun to have a group of people who meet with me once a month (or once a quarter) to prep for next Valentine's Day's cover the city thing. Next year it will fall on a Saturday, so anyone who doesn't work on that day should be able to participate without much trouble. If we could make enough hearts over the course of this year, we could distribute them at church on the Sunday before that week so people can start putting them out when they go to the library, the post office, the grocery store, to walmart or the dollar stores, restaurants, etc.

Would you be interested in helping spread some love and encouragement in your city next year around this time? The hearts don't have to be crocheted, they can be cut out of felt or paper or made of wood or just about any material you can think of. Start spreading smiles around - love people through service :)