When Jane Van Zyll Langhout first learned to knit as a girl in Holland, she probably never thought how far her knitting would go later in her life, or how many people her work would touch.

Langhout, who is an 85-year-old grandmother of Edmonton, Canada, knits every day. She began making her lifetime hobby a daily habit when her husband passed away twenty-five years ago. “It got really lonely…then I started knitting,” she says.

Once again, we have a story of how knitting can heal wounds. But that’s not all it did.

For the second year in a row, Jane is donating 1,000 hand-knit toboggans to the Share the Warmth campaign, an organization that gives warm clothing (socks, scarves, mittens and hats) to shelters across the city. She spent about eight hours a day for eighteen months working on the warm hats. That’s three toboggans a day, and 133,200 yards of yarn!

“I could almost make toboggans with my eyes closed,” Jane says.

We believe her!

Gordon Smith, who heads up Share the Warmth, says this about Jane: “People like her are dedicated, and she certainly has a passion for it. She doesn’t [even] see the end result. I meet with these homeless people personally, so I see the results of her work go to a good cause.”