October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Breast cancer is:


The most common cause of death from cancer among Hispanic women.
The second most common cause of death from cancer among white, black, Asian/Pacific Islander, and American Indian/Alaska Native women.
In 2004, 186,772 women were diagnosed with breast cancer, and 40,954 women died from the disease.

Men can also get breast cancer. In 2004, 1,815 men were diagnosed with breast cancer, and 362 men died from the disease.

There are different kinds of breast cancer. The kind of breast cancer depends on which cells in the breast turn into cancer. Breast cancer can begin in different parts of the breast, like the ducts or the glands (or lobules.)

No one is immuned from cancer. Let's show our support in October. You can wear pink to let others see the support for the fight agains breast cancer.

Help someone you know. Take her or him to lunch, shopping, to sit in the park and feed the birds. Learn to knit this month and start making chemo caps for cancer patients. There are many ways to let those suffering with this dreadful disease that you care and are aware of what it is doing to people from all races, creeds, religions, political preferences, the rich, the poor, famous and unknown.

Caps Received from Anne Lee in California

Anne Lee, who lives in El Macero, California is our latest knitter. She sent us a package this week. A package of caps. They're beautiful caps! There is a correspondance between Anne and Vivian earlier in the blog. Here is a picture of the caps received from her this weekend:

Thank you, Anne. There will be some happy faces at the Baylor cancer center.

We Need a Name for Our Knitters and Crocheters

Do you have a suggestion for what we can call the knitters and crocheters who do their loving work for the Joyce's Chemo Cap Project? We don't like to always refer to them as 'knitters and crocheters'. If you have a suggestion, please let us know in the comment section. Just click on the comment at the bottom of the post. You can leave your name or check anonymous. Thanks everyone who reads our blog and contributes to our project.

Information About the Distribution of the Chemocaps

We've posted information showing our new members of Joyce's Chemo Caps when they join us. We also have the patterns for the caps, pictures of our 'happy cappers' on the blog and letters from the 'cappers'. We've never really explained the distribution of the caps and people have asked us how we do it.
This is how we collect and distribute the caps. There are some that drop off caps to us while we're sitting around the table at the Allen Senior Recreation Center. We have no requirement that they have to meet us there or even go to the center. Many are not seniors or do not live in Allen. We meet at the center but our project is not affiliated with them. We've received caps by mail. We have not even met some of the people that make the caps but give the caps to someone else to bring them to us. We've even received caps from other states such as California and other states too far to be delivered except by mail. Some of our group do not knit or crochet but help us by pinning our cards to the caps, rolling yarn, and sorting the caps to distribute.
We usually sort all of the caps we receive on Fridays. Because everyone has different ways and different patterns and makes the caps out of different yarns or colors, we want to divide the caps evenly so each cancer center gets a good variety of caps. Some of our group buys their own yarn but if they cannot, we furnish the yarn. Our only stipulation is that the yarn is soft and is not made of wool. This makes for a good variety of caps. Many of our caps are thin. This is good because in the beginning of our project, the purpose was for thin caps to be worn to sleep in. Joyce needed something to wear to bed. Thin caps are better for this purpose. Some are thicker, good for cold winter days or nights when the 'capper' goes to the doctor, shopping or just out of the house. We receive both crocheted caps and knitted caps. And, some caps even have buttons, ribbons, little hand made flowers and other little added touches to the caps.
We sort the caps according to different categories. We end up with a lot of stacks of different caps. Then we divide the them into individual stacks to go to the centers. We make sure that there are duplicates in each stack because there may be more than one person to want a particular cap. But we don't want all of the same cap to go to one center either. Variety is better.
Another reason we want the caps to be delivered to us is because we need to have a correct count of caps that we collect and deliver. It help us to know which cancer center is going to be needing caps. We also like to keep some caps on hand in case we receive a call from a new center. And we get calls from individuals so we like to keep caps on hand. It also helps us with the distribution of yarn.

We currently distribute 'Joyce's Chemo Caps" to the following centers:
Baylor- Plano
Dr. Kelly - Allen
Parkland - Dallas
Texas Oncology Center/Plano
Texas Oncology Center/ Allen
Gilda's Guild/ Allen
UTSW - Dallas
And friends who need our caps.

Coming soon are our new centers in September will be:
Baylor - Dallas
Presbyterian - Allen

We sent 50 caps to Woodward Cancer Center in Brighton, MI.
We would like to thank everyone who has donated caps to our project.

Our project has become a ministry.

In Joyce's Memory,
Vivian, Jan and Lena

Another Hospital Gets Caps

SUSAN, a lady from Plano who is in our group has sent crochet caps to M.D. Anderson Cancer Hospital in Houston, Texas. GOOD JOB...

We Have a Wonderful New Knitter

Frances Nelson is our newest knitter. She was worried that her caps wouldn't meet up to our requirements. She and her daughter, Dru, drove to meet us at the Allen Senior Center Saturday. They drove from Richardson. Did we like her caps! Oh my gosh! We loved them. We visited for awhile and found Frances and Dru to be very nice people, committed to helping others, people and animals alike. Here is a picture of Frances with some of her caps, a picture of Frances, Vivian and Jan and a picture of the bunch of caps she brought to us. Great variety, beautiful colors. Thank you so much Frances for your help in our project.