Friday, May 27, 2011

Here a, there a, everywhere a chemo hat

Over the past couple of months I've been communicating a bit with Prairie Yarns in Fargo, North Dakota - the shop was running a chemo cap drive, and they were collecting free patterns to make available to their knitters. 

I'm always so happy when somebody can use one of my chemo patterns for donation because I get so busy obsessing about things like the Irresistible I never seem to get past designing and sample-making.  A few days ago I heard that from an initial goal of 50 hats in 50 days, the group there came up with a whopping 366 hats!

Man I would love to sit in on Prairie Yarns' knitting group - those are some great people and, I suspect, seriously fast knitters.

Anyway all that was very nice and then yesterday during a quick (because we both had to dash) catchup with a friend I really like which shouldn't matter but does, said friend told me that pretty much since Prairie Yarns' chemo cap drive started she's been diagnosed with breast cancer, had a mastectomy, and is about to start chemo herself.

Crash.  All I will say further on that is thank goodness I have a huge stash of organic undyed cotton in my stash, plus some very fine seasilk I might be able to work into something with texture and drape, an a lot of soft woolly things for sleep caps if she should in fact lose her gorgeous hair.  And I'm so glad I bought a copy of Laura Irwin's Boutique Knits when it came out, because it has two very cute cloche patterns in it.

It's so typical, isn't it, to want to do something when you can't really do anything?  I didn't cast on for a hat last night, but I sure did knit like the wind so I can once I find out what, if anything, she'd like.

2 comments:

Brendaknits said...

How terrible. I've never known a person my age with a serious disease. It must be a horrible feeling.

Mary Keenan said...

Yep, pretty horrible... but gosh, how lucky are you and the people you know!