Our 2011 service project was announced at the January meeting. Biz the Clown entertained us as he talked about our project to knit chemo caps for cancer patients.
This year’s service project is dedicated to Carrie Bartz.She was the MKG Secretary who passed away in the summer of 2010. One of the charity knitting causes that Carrie was involved in was knitting chemo caps for oncology patients. One of those recipients made sure that we knew the cap she was wearing at Carrie’s memorial service had been knitted by Carrie.
We are working with the American Cancer Society to donate the chemo caps in Duluth, Minneapolis, Rochester and St Paul. The ACS will be handing out the caps at their local offices, their sponsored Hope Lodges (Rochester & Minneapolis), SMDC (Duluth), HCMC (Minneapolis), Mayo (Rochester) and United (St Paul).
Our goal is to knit 400 chemo caps (100 for each city). We have a thermometer showing our progress and we will reveal the ongoing tally at each meeting.
We are having a contest for members, with prizes for the top 2 winners each half year. The contest will be for who donates the most chemo caps each half year. The winners will be announced and prizes awarded at the July (picnic) and December (potluck) meetings. I will bring all the chemo caps donated each half year to the award meetings, so everyone can see and touch the caps. I’ll be accepting chemo caps at each meeting, so you can bring them in when ever you have a cap done, you don’t have to save them until one of the award meetings.
If you won’t be able to bring the chemo caps to a meeting, or have friends who would like to contribute, but don’t come to meetings, we will have a box at Yarnover for donations. We will also have this box at all the events that MKG volunteer’s for this year.
We have a list of suggested yarn (soft & elastic) on our service blog (http://mnknittersguild.wordpress.com). We also have links for web sites that have patterns for chemo caps. We want to make sure that these chemo caps are special & not just your regular hats. Please use the suggested yarn & patterns specific to chemo caps (pattern is different from regular hats due to the recipients not having much hair). If you have any chemo cap patterns that you have knitted & really like, please let Michele Germanson know so we can make sure people know about it.
Each quarter, we will be showcasing a specific chemo cap pattern. A member of the guild will knit the chemo cap and we will display the cap at a monthly meeting (January, April, July & October). A picture of the chemo cap will be put out on the blog for everyone to view, along with the pattern. If you would like to volunteer to be one of the knitters for one of the showcased chemo caps, let Michele Germanson know.