For the last 17 years, local knitters and crocheters have been using their skills to supply handmade hats to all babies born at Mercy Hospital.
And the Mad Hatters group is looking for more volunteers.
Cathy Hoch, who has been heading (get it?) the group since she retired in 2018, said she initially became involved as a recipient because she worked in the nursery at Mercy. This year alone, she’s made 70 hats for the project, and she estimates she’s delivered more than 400 hats total this year to the hospital.
Make some hats!
Hats made for the Mad Hatter project can be dropped off at North Point Furniture in the North Point Mall, 1315 Main Ave.
For more information, email dgomadhatters@gmail.com.
But knitting – or crocheting – hundreds of tiny hats with about a 12-inch circumference and 6-inch height is a lot of work, and the Mad Hatters can always use extra hands, she said, adding that there are about 50 people on the group’s email list, but there are maybe seven active members.
It’s a pretty casual group to belong to, Hoch said; there are no official membership duties and craftspeople can make hats at their own pace. The fun with having more members, she said, comes with the different artistic designs people come up with.
“If somebody wants to knit one a month or something, that’s fine,” she said. “The more the merrier because then you get more diversity and, you know, the yarn and ideas and patterns. We don’t have any meetings. We don’t have any dues. We don’t have any quota. so it’s a pretty easy group to get involved with if people do enjoy knitting or crocheting.”
Hoch said volunteers need not be experts at knitting or crochet because the hats are not difficult to make, but she does recommend that people at least know how to knit in the round. And if volunteers get stumped for a pattern, Hoch has a whole notebook full of ideas.
As far as what type of yarn to use, there aren’t a lot of rules, she said, save for one big one: Volunteers must avoid using a certain color for a practical reason.
“The only requirement is that the hospital the nurses don’t like to have the hats in yellow yarn because it can make the babies look jaundiced,” Hock said.
But other than that, the hats are a great way to knock down some of the stash we know you knitters and crocheters are hoarding. (Present company excluded, of course ...)
And while it may be easy to get swept up into the details of creating the baby hats, Hoch said the project is important because craftspeople are creating keepsakes for families welcoming new little ones into the family.
“I know when I did work in the nursery, the dads really got a big kick out of picking out the hats. They would spend a lot of time poring over the all the hats in the box and trying to find the right one for their baby and the one that their wife would like,” Hoch said. “It’s just a sweet thing that’s been going on at Mercy since 2006, and I really would like to see it keep going.”
katie@durangoherald.com
