If you are not confident about a yarn choice, rub it against your own skin and see what reaction your skin has to it. If it feels itchy to you, it won’t be a good option for your chemo cap.
Make Her Feel Beautiful
To me, it is all in the details of the hat that really add that sparkle and will help your recipient feel truly confident. If you are knitting the hat specifically for someone, ask about their personal style. Do they love elegant buttons? Do they have a favorite color? Do they like a fitted hat or a more slouchy hat? Do they want a fabric flower on their hat? I recently started adding handmade fabric flowers to my chemo caps because they are so cute and inexpensive to create. I also love to visit Hobby Lobby for sweet embellishments that can add a little sparkle to your hat.
Wrap It With Love
Half the joy for me is in wrapping the gifts with love for their recipients. Imagine that you are struggling through your treatment and someone unexpectedly gives you a gift filled with something that will help you feel beautiful and confident. I love to wrap my hats in pretty tissue-filled boxes or in simple newspaper tied with yarn with fabric flower toppers that they can use to accessorize their hats. I finish all my chemo caps with homemade gift tags. As a treat to myself, I bought a personalized stamp from Etsy and I have to say, it really adds that professional touch to my gifts! Sometimes I cut the gift tags with my Silhouette craft cutter and other times I keep it simple by just using my circle punch that I have in my craft supplies. These are tied with yarn to each hat.
Find a Home for Your Hats
If you don’t know anyone personally going through cancer, there are many people out there who could benefit from your donation. Check your local hospital’s oncology department to find out if they could use your donations. Usually baskets of these hats are made available to patients when they are undergoing treatment. If you can’t find a place for your hats locally, you can mail them in to Head Huggers (headhuggers.org) where your hat will find a good home through their organization.
Chemo Caps Come in All Shapes & Sizes
Sadly, I have had to knit wee chemo caps for tiny patients that shouldn’t even know what the word ‘cancer’ means. It breaks my heart to make these tiny caps and it serves as a constant reminder to me just how fragile our lives really are. Keep your smaller chemo patients in mind as well as men who are undergoing chemo and might need a nice fitted cap to keep their heads warm in the winter time. When making chemo caps, try making a variety of sizes for both males and females so that donations are on hand for a variety of patients.
Looking for great patterns to knit? Sign up for a free membership to Ravelry.com to get started. You can search thousands of beautiful patterns for charity. The best part is that many of them are available for free. Here are my top 5 pattern picks for chemo caps: 1. Lace Trim Chemo Cap by Maureen Keenan (available for free download) 2. Pinch Hat by Cecily Glowik MacDonald (available for purchase for $ 5.50) 3. The Republic Hat by Nicole Reeves (available for free download) 4. The Toddler Republic Hat by Nicole Reeves (available for free download) 5. Man Hat by Haven Leavitt (available for free download)
Amy Allen Clark: Foodie. Bookworm. Novice photographer. Java junkie. Knitter & hot glue gun toting extraordinaire. A lover of the simple and family-centered life. Happily living this contented existence within a penny-wise budget and showcasing it on momadvice.com.
THE FAMILY MAGAZINE | OCTOBER 2012
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