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In This Week's Issue

Looking For Harvest Festival Volunteers!

Hey folks! We are looking for ✨volunteers✨ to help staff our Harvest Festival booth on Saturday, October 3rd at Juanita Beach Park.

Event flyer with a dark wood-plank background decorated along the top with orange, red, and yellow pennant bunting. Text reads "Kirkland Parks & Community Services" in yellow above large bold lettering for "Harvest" (in red with yellow accents and a leaf dotting the 'i') and cursive script for "festival" (in bright yellow). The bottom right lists the location: "Juanita Beach Park, North Side, 9703 NE Juanita DR, Kirkland".

We’ll be setting up the booth between 9 and 9:30am and then the event goes until about 4:30pm. If you're interested in helping out during any of the event (even just an hour!) please reach out to a Liveable Kirkland lead on Discord or email us at [email protected]!

We've had a lot of fun and met a lot of great people with this event in the past. It's a great chance to let our neighbors know how we’re helping make our community stronger, and what they can do to get involved! 💪

UPCOMING EVENT

Neighborhood Scavenger Hunt: Juanita

A simple vector illustration of a tri-folded map set against a white background. The map displays a green landmass with two pine trees on the left, two small brown mountain peaks in the middle, and smaller neighboring islands nearby in teal water. A black dashed path winds across the island from left to right, ending at a prominent red "X".

Also on Saturday, October 3rd we’ll be hosting a scavenger hunt 🔍 in Juanita!

This is the second in a series of scavenger hunts we’re holding across Kirkland’s neighborhoods. We want to give our community an excuse to get out and explore parts of their city they may not have happened upon in their daily routines. And also something fun to do with the little ones 👪 : )

Check out liveablekirkland.org/scavengerhunt the day of the scavenger hunt (or scan one of the QR codes on the yard signs we’ll have scattered around Juanita) to play! This time there’s no time limit so all completing teams will be entered into a chance to win a prize! 🏆

We hope you’ll come out and join us!

EVENT RECAP

179 Bed Warmers Assembled!

Last week, for the second year in a row, we hosted a bed-warmer work party. We assembled 179 reusable, microwaveable bed warmers for our unsheltered neighbors who live in church parking lots in their cars or tents as guests of six different safe-parking or tent-city programs across the Eastside and Edmunds. Each program has at least one microwave available for their guests and has requested 20-40 of these bed warmers.

Volunteers gathered indoors for a work party to assemble microwaveable bed warmers. In the foreground, a woman wearing glasses and a gray shirt smiles as she pours feed corn into a white sock. Next to her are large bags of Country Feeds whole corn, a black folding wagon filled with completed warmers, and several other smiling participants gathered around tables. Large windows with sports flags hang in the background.
A seated man with glasses and a baseball cap holds a white sock stretched open and carefully pours feed corn into it from a clear plastic cup. On the table in front of him are plastic measuring containers filled with feed corn, a metal tray, and an assembled sock warmer. To his left, a woman with short blonde hair and glasses watches the process, while other volunteers work at tables in the background.
Volunteers stand around a wooden table indoors holding white socks during a bed-warmer assembly event. In front of them, a black folding wagon contains three large Nutrena Country Feeds sacks—one with loose feed corn and two filled with completed sock warmers. A fourth bag sits on the floor beside the cart. Large glass windows behind the group show an outdoor plaza and a sign that reads "Liveable Kirkland".
Volunteers working together in an indoor event space to assemble bed warmers. In the center, a woman in a tie-dye shirt reaches into a large Nutrena feed bag to scoop corn, while a woman in a patterned shirt assists beside her. Behind them, a man holds up a long, filled white sock, and another volunteer nearby holds a completed warmer while watching the process.
A group of four volunteers gathered around a wooden table indoors during a community work party. A young man in a black shirt smiles toward the camera as he holds open a white sock, while women beside and across from him hold finished bed warmers and measuring cups. Open sacks of feed corn and packed bed warmers sit on the floor in the foreground, and a glass door in the background features a "Liveable Kirkland" poster.
Close-up of a young woman with dark hair smiling at the camera during a bed-warmer assembly event. Wearing a gray sweater and a pink "Hello my name is Thea" tag, she uses a clear plastic cup to carefully pour feed corn into a white sock stretched over a funnel ring. A clear tub containing extra corn sits on the table in front of her.

The original suggestion for these warmers came to us last year from one of the resident-organizers of Camp United We Stand (a tent city that will be moving to a Kirkland church lot again next month). Chris explained that no matter how good a sleeping bag you have, during the cold months of the year, the mattress gets cold-soaked during the day. It's very helpful to be able to pre-warm your bed by slipping a bed warmer like this into the foot of your sleeping bag so that you don't have to warm the sleeping bag and mattress with just your body heat. He said having access to a bed warmer like this makes a big difference in quality of sleep and health.

These bed warmers are made out of (new) socks filled with whole feed corn. We turned 320 pounds of feed corn into 179 bed warmers in about a hour and 15 minutes, and we had a terrific time doing it!

As fall weather sets in over the next few weeks, we'll be delivering bed warmer orders to the sites where they've been requested.

🧦 Big thanks to everyone who helped out! 🧦

MEETING RECAPS

No City Meetings This Week

Planning Commission didn’t meet this week and the next City Council meeting isn’t until Oct 6, so tune in for the agenda preview next week!

UPCOMING EVENTS
Come Out and Get Involved!

A white A-frame sign in the foreground reads "Eastside COFFEE OUTSIDE -> ALL WELCOME <-" pointing toward a group of people gathered under a wooden outdoor shelter with a small dog.

  • Sep 30 (weekly on Wed): Coffee Outside ☕

    Drop by to meet neighbors and to enjoy a hot drink and a fresh-baked vegan muffin! Kids and dogs welcome.

    7 - 9:30a · Kirkland Rotary Central Station

  • Oct 1-8: Week Without Driving🚫🚗
    Spend a week using transit, walking, rolling, biking, or ride-sharing—anything except driving yourself. It’s a powerful way to gain insight into the daily realities of non-drivers in our region and help build momentum for safer, more accessible infrastructure for everyone.
    Sign up/learn more: weekwithoutdriving.org

  • Oct 4 (weekly on Sun): ToDo’s Bike Garage 🚲

    Work on bike maintenance and get advice!
    Confirm via Insta or phone (323.926.8054) beforehand

    11a - 2p · 14151 123rd Ave NE

  • Oct 21: Urbanism Book Club 📕

    This month’s Urbanism Book Club discussion is on Strawberry Days: How Internment Destroyed a Japanese American Community. Feel free to join for tacos beforehand at 5p at Taco Del Mar. No time to read a book? Come anyway!

    6 - 7:30p · BookTree Kirkland

View Full Calendar
Two smiling women standing outside in a sunny parking lot behind a metal rolling utility cart. The top shelf holds several white, tube-shaped bed warmers made from socks filled with corn, with each woman holding one up. The lower shelves hold large sacks packed with additional bed warmers.

The first batch of 54 bed warmers, dropped off with 4 Tomorrow, which runs a safe parking program in Bellevue

Join the conversation online!

Join Liveable Kirkland in a conversation about our city’s present and future! We have an active community on Discord and Facebook and we’d love it if you joined in too!

(And if you add a picture you took to #photos on Discord it might get featured in next week’s issue!)

Until next week,
Your friends at Liveable Kirkland

Bonus Tracks

Additional stories, articles, and media for those who want a little more.

  • Sightline Report Proposes Age-Friendly Housing Policy Changes for Oregon Neighborhoods

    A report from the Sightline Institute highlights how small-scale apartment and condo buildings equipped with elevators create accessible, human-scale homes for aging populations. It outlines policy changes needed for missing middle housing to flourish in residential neighborhoods, offering great lessons as Kirkland updates its housing code.

  • Biking in Seattle is Booming

    Tom Fucoloro, the guy behind Seattle Bike Blog went on KUOW to discuss a massive surge in bicycle ridership across urban corridors following the expansion of protected bike lane networks in Seattle. Proof that investing in safe, connected active transit yields immediate community returns!

  • Velomobile Makers Explore Commercial Comeback Amid Growing Interest in Alternative Transit

    Enthusiasts and vehicle designers are examining a resurgence of velomobiles, which are fully enclosed, pedal-powered human-electric hybrid vehicles. As communities rethink street design and active transportation, these weather-protected, ultra-efficient vehicles offer a fascinating look at alternative human-scale mobility.

  • CityNerd: Seattle's LINK: Almost Too Good to Be Real

    Ray Delahanty takes a deep dive into Seattle's light rail expansion (especially East Link!). Includes a top-10 ranking of the 10 Eastside stations (sorry, Judkins Park & Mercer Island!).

Keep reading

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