Each of the 80 to 90 babies born every month at Mercy Regional Medical Center leaves the hospital with a cap – a gift from the Durango Mad Hatters.

It’s been that way since October 2006 when a half-dozen women gathered to contribute knitted or crocheted caps for newborns, a movement that had begun four years earlier in El Dorado Hills, Calif.

When the parent Mad Hatters, which had expanded to 26 groups with more than 600 members in four states, disbanded in 2010, Southwest Colorado members carried on as the Durango Mad Hatters.

“I have a mailing list of 50 or more mad hatters,” group coordinator Mandy Fuehrer said Wednesday. “But about 30 are dedicated knitters or crocheters.”

They come from Durango, Hesperus, Silverton and Pagosa Springs to meet informally once a month at Yarn Durango to spin yarns while turning yarn into caps.

Residents of Arizona, Missouri and Connecticut who have friends or family in Southwest Colorado occasionally contribute caps, Fuehrer said.

“We love the caps,” Jennifer Hyson, co-manager of the Family Birth Center at Mercy, said. “We have more than 1,000 births a year, and I’ve never heard of any family turning down a cap.”

Retired Mercy employees and other individuals make caps for newborns, too, Hyson said.

A hatter satellite group was established at Durango High School in October by junior Katie Dudley, 16.

About a dozen members, students and faculty gather in math teacher Kor Johnson’s room during their lunch period every Friday, Katie said.

“My grandmother taught me to knit when I was in second grade so I can help others,” she said.

Mad Hatter caps are constructed at the pleasure of the knitter or crocheter. The great variety of color combinations, style, elaborateness and simplicity were evident in the finished pieces brought to the meeting last week.

One requirement is that the caps be no more than 12 to 13 inches in circumference, the average size of a newborn’s head. A plastic babydoll sits on a table in case someone wants to size the piece she’s making.

Donated caps can’t be sold, and it’s recommended that yellow not be incorporated near the base of the cap because the color tends to make babies look jaundiced. Material should be acrylic or cotton, not wool.

Fuehrer, a retired staff assistant at Los Alamos National Laboratory, has coordinated hatter gatherings since spring 2008 when founder Leslie Hanson became too busy with other things.

Fuehrer knits the cap that goes to the first baby born at Mercy each year.

Marian Rizzo, 82, is the oldest hatter and has knitted for more than 50 years. Rizzo is a retired teacher who began her career at age 17 before earning a degree in education from Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, Neb.

Barbara Shore started knitting as a child in 1939, making squares for afghans destined for a Navy war-effort project. She quickly learned to knit without looking, she said, because she feared that her near-sightedness would lead to blindness.

Shore knitted argyle socks when they were the rage but now makes scarves and sweaters for the grandchildren of friends.

Mad Hatters has donated more than 4,500 caps to Mercy since 2006. So far this year, 680 have been donated, not counting the pile left at Yarn Durango last week.

daler@durangoherald.com