Random Acts of Crochet Kindness

Dieterich began pairing crocheted flowers with encouraging messages, and leaving them in public for people to find, after she lost a friend to suicide in 2018. “It gave me a sense of purpose,” she writes in her book, which is named after the Facebook group (now 358,000 members strong) she founded soon after she started the practice. “It made me happy knowing I was potentially making someone else’s day a little bit better.” Instructions for 25 tiny crochet projects—rainbows, hearts, butterflies, and more—are meant to spark joy.

Olivia Dieterich grew up around crafts thanks to her Nan, but she found a true passion for crocheting when she was at school and struggling with her mental health; she learned to crochet from watching Bella Coco on YouTube. Olivia loves using crochet to put kindness out into the world and finds that doing so hugely benefits her own mental health, as well as bringing joy to other people. In 2019 she started the UK-based Facebook group Random Acts of Crochet Kindness, which now has over 350,000 members, with affiliated groups created all over the world, sharing kindness on a global scale. This is her first book.