Thanks to the efforts of Connie Smigarowski, there are fewer kids with cold hands in Calgary, and in locations around the globe, than there used to be.

Connie knits a lot of mittens and gives them all away. She loves to knit and, when she learned a few years ago that there are kids in Calgary who don't have mitts, she began to focus strictly on that need.

Her dedication to the cause keeps her busy. Over the past few years, she's made and given away hundreds of pairs of mitts.

“Last year I did keep track of them and I turned in 326 pair,” said Connie. “This year, I haven't kept track. I don't know where I'm at.”

The majority of Connie's 2014 mitts are destined for children far from Calgary after a friend was packing shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child and asked the knitter to donate to the cause. Connie generously contributed her mittens.

Connie's daughter Peggy says, with mock sarcasm, that, like the shoemaker whose children go barefoot, the mitt knitter’s kids didn't get mitts.

“I have no mitts from her collection,” laughs Peggy. “Although, I have had several donated to give to my friends’ kids.”

Angela Pipe met Connie after moving here from Montreal in the 1990’s. Angela says she’s inspired by the way Connie keeps knitting, despite health issues.

“She lives independently, she handles her own dialysis, she trudges through life with a determined step,” said Angela of Connie. “But she still has the time to think about kids wandering around, especially in the weather that we've had, without any mittens on their hands.”

Peggy says her mother never has to buy wool thanks to the kindness of strangers.

“People from all over, that we don't even know, bring her wool,” explains Peggy.

Connie says, while she’s donated countless mittens, she's never encountered her mitts on a child who received a pair but she would instantly recognize them. She knits a stripe between the cuff and the hand, her trademark, on every mitt.

For all she does to make sure kids have warm hands in the winter, and for showing us you're never too old to make a difference, Connie Smigarowski is this week’s Inspiring Albertan.