so jen there were lots of good news
stories on inauguration day
the security was good the capital wasn't
attacked it went off without a hitch
there was
great singing the very best story of all
however
were your mittens that took the world by
storm
yeah me too i mean it really took me by
storm too
i could never have predicted that that
was gonna happen
so what's happened for you since since
the missions went viral well
you know i mean i literally did nothing
different last wednesday than
than any other day and then all of a
sudden everybody knew who i was so it
did take me a few days to sort of wrap
my
my head around that and so on thursday i
just got up
and went to work you know i taught my
class i'm a second grade teacher
and then my report cards were due on
friday so i just went about living my
life trying to figure out what to do
and then over the weekend i had the idea
of like this is so
great like people want these mittens and
i'm not really in the mitten business
anymore but i can still make them and so
i made some mittens for charity over the
weekend
um one pair is being auctioned off for
outright vermont which is a
queer youth organization um locally
we're near where i live near burlington
vermont
and another pair is being auctioned off
for
passion for paws which is a dog rescue
because i love dogs
and the third is being auctioned off for
my daughter's child um
college account college fund well done
you that's amazing
tell me though about these sanders
specific mittens how long has he had
them when did you knit them for him
you know what i didn't knit them for him
and that is a misconception that i'm
hoping to correct
i i actually take wool sweaters that
have been discarded either they have
a moth hole or they've you know they've
fallen out of fashion or maybe somebody
washed them and they shrunk and i cut
them up and i
sew them back together so i pieced them
back together i
lined them with fleece which is very
soft and then i use well i actually have
one right here i actually use the cuff
of the sweater to be the cuff of the
mitten
so i sort of i love that i love that so
they're recycled they're recycled
so yes people call them upcycled which i
think is very fancy but they're awkward
so i've got this image then you go off
you go off to do your jobs last week you
come back to
look at the odd email in your account
and suddenly there's 10 000 emails in
there is that
is that what happened that is what
happened yeah and they started pouring
in on wednesday
and people found my email address on
twitter because a similar thing to this
happened
last year on a much smaller scale when
bernie was wearing the mittens on the
campaign trail
so so yeah unfortunately my email was
out there although it's not unfortunate
because i i'm gonna harness those emails
and i'm hoping that something good will
come of it because i've started some
partnerships with some
local vermont companies um and they're
really exciting things to come but the
thing that happened today is that i've
partnered with darn tough socks to do a
bernie
sock like a bernie's mitten saw so
that's going to be available it's going
to benefit
um the vermont food bank and exclusive
catty
an exclusive you're you're an exclusive
hot news here breaking news also your
email
inbox is just going to explode all over
again jen so either
you are never gonna sleep for the rest
of your life or you're gonna have to
give up that day job teaching second
grade
and take up full-time soccer mitten
making no
i am not gonna give up my day job
because i i don't want to stop being who
i am
but i have i i have come to the
realization that this
is and can be a movement you know this
was an act of kindness that i did years
ago
um and i expected nothing in return and
and what happened is in our our world's
darkest days of the pandemic everybody
had a chance to laugh about something
right
have you heard from bernie have you
heard from bernie
i have yes he called me on sunday night
um to give me the awesome news that his
fundraiser
which is a sweatshirt that has um the
bernie picture on it where he's you know
sitting in the chair
has raised almost two million dollars
for meals on wheels
here in vermont which touches me
personally because my
own grandmother got meals on wheels so
it's just
so awesome
you