'Everyone has to have a purpose': Nursing home residents knit caps for cancer patients

Dec. 14--HOPEWELL TWP. -- Skeins of yarn in rainbow colors adorned a table in the activities room at Beaver Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center in Hopewell Township, where the Crazy Hat Ladies transformed strands of fiber into knitted caps.

Resident Trudi White founded the fledgling group about three months ago as a means of engagement, but she also has a loftier goal: to donate their handwork to cancer patients.

"I think everyone has to have a purpose and this is going to be ours at the beginning of year," White said, "and if it works out real well, maybe we'll make them for the troops and send them. We have an affiliation with the Yellow Ribbon Girls. They come here and do crafts with us to send overseas, so I thought if we were able to do a good enough job, then maybe we could make them for them."

But first, the women want to perfect the craft. Six make up the group and are in various stages of learning.

Teresa Nagy is one of the newest.

"I just started doing this two weeks ago, and I've ripped two apart. I've made mistakes," she said. This day she knits a pink hat for a great-granddaughter.

"I told her not to worry about it," White said. "I ripped my first one out three times."

Presently, the women work on Christmas gifts for family members, and they've also made infant caps for nursing home staff whose relatives are expecting babies.

Resident Bob Snyder took notice of their work and asked if they'd make him one.

"I just thought the talent they demonstrated would be a good thing for me to have," he said. "I needed a hat. (White) graciously volunteered and said, 'I'll make you one. What color do you want?'"

Snyder, a Marine who served in the Korean War, chose red and gold -- colors of the corps.

White's now working on a black-and-gold cap for a Pittsburgh Steelers fan. She crafted an all-white hat for her daughter-in-law, a purple one for a friend and one in maroon and gray for her grandson.

"He likes the game Minecraft, and I guess the colors associated with Minecraft are maroon and gray," said White, a former convenience store manager.

"There's a lot of activities here that I think aren't geared for everyone," she said, "and I wanted to get more people involved in things that we do and this is actually simple. It's good for dexterity for the hands and mental, you know. You have to concentrate a little bit to do it, so I just felt it would be a good activity."

The Crazy Hat Ladies -- White came up with the name on a whim -- are scheduled to meet twice a week, but "we meet whenever we feel like it," White said.

"This is called Quick Knit," she said, referring to a circular loom on which the women work. Looms come in various sizes in order to make hats for infants to adults. The looms have pegs around the perimeter on which yarn is looped counterclockwise. A pick lifts the yarn up and over the peg to form rows.

"It's very simple," she said. "On a really good day, I can make two in a day. I've made close to 50 in three months."

"I keep telling everybody a 3-year-old can do it," resident Katie Creps said.

Nagy, who has Parkinson's disease, said making the caps is "good physical therapy, in a way, and it keeps my mind off of where it shouldn't be. It's fun."

Next month, the knitters will start making hats for cancer patients in area hospitals and nursing homes.

"I had a friend that had cancer that I graduated with," White said. "Somebody made her hats. She and I would go out to dinner and she would say, 'Do you like my new hat,' and she would just beam. It made her feel so good that she had that given to her and to know somebody cared."

Nagy said the project will be "a good thing" and recipients will "like it very much."

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