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12/14/2022 09:24 AMFrom heartfelt memorials to shows of support or as a way to simply make others smile, Northford’s Doreen Vetro has become known for her self-described “crocheted appreciation creations.”
Doreen’s colorful, yarn-based creations can be personal or very public. As one who attended Sandy Hook Elementary School during her own childhood, Doreen has felt especially compelled to help memorialize the tragic school shooting of December 14, 2012.
Each year since the first anniversary of the shooting, Doreen has set up a wooden remembrance cross on the village green across from her church, Northford Congregational. This year, the cross was embellished by a garland of small, crocheted flowers Doreen made in different colors to represent each little boy and girl, as well as the adults, lost in the tragedy.
“Every year, the memories of hearing about Sandy Hook come flooding back. Having gone to fourth grade in that school, I knew the driveway, the entrance, layout of the school ...the office, the hallways, the cafeteria, and the classrooms.”
As a youngster, Doreen lived with two foster families for a time, before she was reunited with her father and his wife. Doreen attended Sandy Hook Elementary School in fourth grade, where her stepmother was the school’s nurse.
“She started there in 1956. When they opened the new school [in 2016] at the new location, she was an honored guest,” says Doreen of her stepmother.
Doreen also has her stepmom to thank for helping her to learn how to crochet.
“I was about 9 years old when I started to crochet. My stepmother and my grandmother taught me,” says Doreen, who crochets every day.
Doreen also notes she’s grateful to have had both of her grandmothers in her life, including “... one [who] taught me to crochet, and one who lived to 101!”
Doreen and her husband, Mike, have resided in Northford for about 30 years and raised their daughter, Jenna, in town. For the record, Jenna, now married, is a knitter, notes Doreen. Of course, Doreen crocheted a beautiful garland, including hearts and flowers, to help decorate her daughter’s wedding celebration.
Speaking of flowers, as a member of Northford Congregational Church, Doreen has become notably recognized for helping to attract customers to the church’s annual Mother’s Day flower sale.
“I’m the crazy flower lady!” says Doreen, who has bedecked herself in crocheted flower garlands to make a flower fashion statement at the outdoor sale beside the church, located at 4 Old Post Road.
Doreen-as-flower-lady has also caught the attention of The Sound’s photographers, appearing twice on front pages in recent years. She’s also a close personal friend of the Easter Bunny, who appears at the church’s annual Easter plant sale. Thanks to Doreen, in 2020, when the sale couldn’t be held due to the pandemic, the Easter Bunny still made an appearance, waving to passersby from the village green.
During the pandemic, Doreen used her crocheting skills to help raise spirits and assist others. She crocheted some 400 “connectors” for first responder facial masks. The crocheted connecting strap, worn at the back of the head, helped relieve the elasticized pressure of mask straps pulling at the ears of wearers.
“When I ran out of buttons for them, I crocheted the buttons, too,” she recalls.
Doreen also kept busy during the pandemic shutdown by crocheting palm-sized red hearts, which she carried with her and passed out to thank those she met working on the front lines.
“I was passing them out to anyone I saw working — nurses, clerks at the grocery store and the bank.”
She continued to spread the love as the pandemic evolved by bringing her hearts to newly re-opened restaurants. And, as a retired U.S. Post Office employee of over 30 years, Doreen also helped hearten her Northford neighbors during the pandemic by hanging about 200 crocheted hearts in the area on the flags of neighbors’ mailboxes.
At her own home during the pandemic, Doreen wrote words of support in chalk on her driveway, where she placed a life-sized crocheted figure to sit alongside, making a roadside display. Other life-sized figures Doreen has shared street-side have included some put there to spread seasonal cheer; such as her life-sized, bright green Grinch in his red Santa suit.
And that’s not all.
“Did you ever hear of yarn bomb?” Doreen asks.
If you haven’t heard of one, you still may have seen it. The display of colorful, knitted items can be spotted randomly wrapped around utility poles, adorning trees, lamp posts, and other spots in society. They’re part street art, part art installation.
“People who crochet or knit, they take an area,” says Doreen. “My yarn bomb is a tree in my front yard.”
Doreen’s yard yarn bomb is packed with colorful elements, including a crocheted face, a crocheted birdhouse, and much more. Doreen’s also the creator of a yarn bomb decorating a tree in another town.
“In the center of Whitneyville, my hairdresser has a tree decorated with my stuff,” says Doreen.
In particular, the tree features several colorful, crocheted faces of different sizes.
“People stroll by and they notice there’s a face and take pictures. It brightens people’s day,” says Doreen.
Doreen also continues to brighten a patch of Northford by decorating a chain link fence at a bridge over an area brook. It’s hung with small crocheted flowers in several seasonal colors, as well as those done in the yellow and blue colors of the Ukrainian national flag. There’s also a small, crocheted Ukrainian flag.
“It’s like a journal of what’s been going on for the last two years. It’s been keeping me busy while I’ve been retired,” Doreen says, adding, “...at one point, someone was taking some down, and the neighbors there put up a sign,” asking people not to remove the crocheted items.
Doreen actually crocheted several small Ukrainian flags following the Russian invasion in February 2022. In April, she hung three of them on chain link fencing spanning three bridges over I-91 in North Haven. Her flags stayed in place for a few months — the longest lasting through August — until someone took them down. Another Ukrainian flag Doreen crocheted can still be seen where she placed it at Totoket Valley Park in Northford.
Doreen says she keeps crocheting because she wants to keep on giving. She’s crafted dozens of crocheted critters and items, from pumpkins to owls. Some of her crocheted creations are perfect as ornaments, such as those currently adorning a small Christmas tree in a shop at Mohegan Sun casino in Montville. Doreen gives any payment she may receive for her yarn creations to charity, especially those supporting breast cancer awareness and research.
Remarkably, Doreen has also literally given of herself to help someone in need. After reading a 2021 story in The Sound about a Branford resident seeking a possible living kidney donation match, Doreen says she was inspired to be among those responding to the call to be tested as a potential donor.
“I was a blood donor pretty much all my life. I said, ‘I’m retired and I’m in good health, so maybe I can do this for somebody,” Doreen says. “I saw people on dialysis, and that wasn’t a kind of lifestyle anybody should have.”
Doreen also says she was inspired by her grandmother who lived to 101, who had enjoyed lifelong good health (including swimming in Long Island Sound into her late ‘90s), and, upon her passing, bequeathed her body to Yale University for study.
After Doreen completed her testing to be a potential live kidney donor, she was contacted by an extended member of one of her two foster families who was in need of kidney — and Doreen learned she could be the woman’s donor.
On Nov. 8 of this year, Doreen donated a kidney to her. Now a little more than a month out of surgery, Doreen says the recipient is doing well. For her part, Doreen says she already feels nearly “...100 percent,” adding, “...my motto is ‘keep lookin’ up!’”
She also says she’s glad it all worked out.
“I feel like I’m giving back to the foster family by donating my kidney,” says Doreen, adding, when she first considered testing to be a donor, “I said, ‘Let me see if I can do this and see how far I get,’ — and I got all the way to the end!”
Visit this story at Zip06.com to view photos of Doreen Vetro’s crocheted creations.