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Knitting Pals By the Bay - The Chemo Cap Project |
The Knitting Pals By The Bay came into being with one purpose and goal, to knit chemo caps for cancer patients of all ages in our San Francisco Bay Area community. The need is great and the project is ongoing. In September 2001, my best friend's sister had been going thru chemo and I sent her a cap. She was so very grateful, until then I never realized how one cap could help with a cancer patient. Then I went to a group of knitters and asked if they would like to start making caps
The Pals came together through knitting classes provided through the South San Francisco Parks & Recreation Leisure Program. The group wanted to do something in their community with their skills and decided to provide chemo caps for all ages that we could distribute to clinics and hospitals in the Bay Area.
The Pals are happy to be donating their time, supplies and love to this wonderful rewarding project. We have recruited additional knitters at Senior community centers, churches, temples and by word of mouth, I would guess we have 60 knitters on board and because the need is so great we need every knitter and every cap that comes to us. The caps are knit using soft machine washable materials. They are knit in the round so there are no seams and are comfortable.
In July 2002, we delivered our first caps. As of December 7, 2002, we have given away 700 caps to St. Mary's in San Francisco, Seton in Daly City, Kaiser in South San Francisco, Mills in San Mateo, Mercy Center in Burlingame, Lucile Packard Children's at Stanford, Charlotte Maxwell Clinic and Highland in Oakland are but a few of the hospitals and clinics in the Bay Area receiving the donated caps. We are supplying caps for children, teens and adults.
The community has been most appreciative of our efforts. The Parks and Recreation council gave all of the original knitters certificates for this program. As founder of this program, I cannot begin to tell you the wonderful rewards in having an idea and seeing it come to reality because of the wonderful support of knitting students, friends, family and the general community. I can honestly say I never expected to have such support or did I ever imagine we would grow so rapidly filling an important need that had not been done in our area.
We are still a grass roots operation with a rapid growth rate. The work is rewarding. It's so wonderful knowing we are filling a need that was not being done. The patients and staff have been so appreciative of our work.
For more information -
Go to our website
Knitting Pals By The Bay
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