Leeds woman's mission to knit 84 scarves for Christmas gets worldwide support

Brenda Horsefall, who lives in Sunnyview Bupa Care Home in Beeston, wanted to gift a scarf to all 84 of her friends at the care home.

With a steely determination but a lack of resources, Sunnyview staff put their heads together on how Brenda was going to get her mission done in time for Christmas.

The home's activities coordinator put out a Facebook post asking for knitting squares to be donated in order to help Brenda complete the 84 scarves.

The request had such a big response that Brenda has now received knitting squares from about 1,000 people as far as Australia and the USA.

With the extra resources she has already managed to knit an impressive 174 scarves.

Brenda said: "I am overwhelmed with the response from people. I would never have believed that we would actually be able to achieve this before Christmas.

"I now have meaningful presents to give to each resident and I am grateful to everyone who helped me to do this.”

Brenda was encouraged to take on the mission as part of Bupa's Never Too Late campaign, which encourages care home residents to set and achieve new goals.

General manager, Victoria Darlow, said: “We try to arrange as many personalised activities like this to encourage residents to continue ticking things off that they want to achieve while they are at the home.

"Everyone’s got ambitions that they’d like to achieve and being in a care home shouldn’t get in the way of that.

“We are fortunate to be based in a great community, so we thought what better way to help Brenda achieve her goal than by asking the help of others.

"The residents are so grateful to Brenda for this gift and I think we were all quite overwhelmed with the response we’ve had so far.”

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