Hats for Charity

A while ago, I was listening to a fiber-related podcast called The Yarniacs Podcast. If you are interested, you can find out more about them here.

They were talking about a group on Ravelry called Hats for Sailors. They are providing sailors on Navy ships with handmade 100% wool hats one ship at a time. Their latest ship required 6000 hats. That is a lot of hats.

As you know, community and community projects are close to my heart. Of course, I shared this information with my local knitting group and several members were on board and ready to knit hats.

Then, I saw a group called Resistance Knitters on Ravelry and they called for knitting hats for people in need. I liked that idea even more than knitting hats for sailors who, after all, are getting clothed by our government.

Enter a new charity shop that opened in our little town with the emphasis on providing aid to migrants. You might or might not know that many asylum seekers to the US are stuck on the Mexican side of the border. These are people that have experienced much trauma in their lives and usually do not have any resources of their own.

This charity is clothing and helping migrants on both sides of the border and they were very excited to possibly receive hats to help keep especially the children warm during the cold winter nights.

Of course, I persuaded my group to start knitting for this cause instead of the sailors. Don't worry, the rest of the world stepped up and the sailor group received over 8000 hats. All good.

I myself knitted 22 hats for the charity effort and I delivered over 30 from our group. I know that other members mailed their hats directly, but I am not sure how many we were able to donate.

I tried to make many hats suitable for children but used my son as a model ever so often to see if they also could fit an adult head.

Here is a photo of the delivery time. It was a nice full bag of hats.

The name of the charity shop is Welcome Home Boutique located in Lemon Grove.

If you want to send some hats, scarves, or other useful items to help out send them to
7963 Broadway,
Lemon Grove, CA 91945.

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