Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Fun Knits for Charity

by Kelly

Last year I was going to contribute to a handmade blanket drive, only to discover that they only accepted donations until September. So I thought I'd post a few charities now, while there is still plenty of time to make and mail projects.

The Big Knit asks that you knit tiny woolly hats, which will be placed on smoothie bottles in UK stores. For each hat knitted, money will be donated to help older people keep warm. Check out ageUK for details. PDF patterns are available on the innocent drinks blog, in the right sidebar.
Donation dates to be announced - in 2010 the deadline was October 29th.







Closer to home, Bernat is joining with Project Linus to provide new, handmade blankets to Canadian and American children who are in need. Check out the BernatCares site here.
 Accepting donations until August 1st, or send your project directly to Project LInus.


 
The Red Scarf Project provides encouragement to orphans who have aged out of the foster care system. On Valentine's Day the charity sends handmade red scarves to FCS students who are attending college or trade schools. Find patterns and the mailing address here
Accepting donations September 1st through December 15th



And finally, here's something that can be done year round - Chemo caps. When my mom lost her hair to radiation and chemo, she tried scarves, scarves with hats, and hats of all varieties, but she just wasn't happy with any of them. Mostly, she said that everything was just too hot.

At the time, I couldn't knit or crochet, and now, thankfully, she has recovered and no longer needs one. But there are lots of charities who are distributing chemo caps, so I thing I'm going to try my hand at this one. Something in a nice cool DK cotton, I think. There are lots of patterns here and a link to the main site (called HeadHuggers) here. They have branches in many states and countries. The Chicago branch is called Windy City HeadHuggers.

I'm especially fond of this pattern, for some reason - it looks like something out of the 1920's





I don't know if I would have made this for my mom, though - she always kind of laughed at my taste in hats.

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