A Tree Warmer for Your Heart

photo courtesy of Brooklyn Prospect Charter School via Park Slope PatchIf this doesn't make your heart grow 3 sizes after you read it, you may be a cold-hearted snake. As FiPS writer Kerri lamented on Tuesday, those adorable little tree sweaters on 16th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues went missing last Sunday.

Only two days after the thievery, Laurie Russell, the guerilla knitter who created the tree warmers, found a new mini-sweater on one of the trees with the following note attached:

Dear Tree Sweater Person,

I am so sorry that your tree sweaters got stolen! So I have given you this.

--S.B.K.

This past Wednesday, Russell happened upon a teacher from Brooklyn Prospect Charter School who was working with a group of students to re-sweater the trees. The students were part of an art club and wanted to help out when they heard the tree sweaters were stolen. 

According to Brittany Toscano, a spokesperson for BPCS:

Some of the middle school students at BPCS have also been onto the mysterious disappearance of the trees' fashion accessories and brought their concerns to their art teacher. Together they began a knitting campaign to replace the sweaters and even reached out to the artist.

Russell started knitting the tree sweaters back in 2008 and has been knitting one a year since. She said now there are about six sweaters on the trees, and although she was bummed out about the her sweaters being stolen, she has found a little "solace" in the helping hands from the neighborhood.  

[via Park Slope Patch]