Thanks for the donations!

Your yarn has gone to N Street Village in DC, groups that teach kids to knit, Iraqi refugees, Georgetown University Hospital Lombardi Center and groups that knit for the DC homeless.

Local crafters have donated items for the clients of Food & Friends (DC), Alternative House (VA) and Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (VA).

Now that spring is here, we will turn our attention to the 14th Annual
TAPS National Military Survivor Seminar & Good Grief Camp for Young Survivors, held Memorial Day weekend in Virginia. Last year Claire offered Memory Pillows to participants. Please help us support these families who have lost a loved one in military service.

Details will be posted here shortly. Please contact us at Knitters.and.Crocheters.care@gmail.com for more inforamtion.

Oh - I almost forgot - we brought donations to the TAPS event.

We donated:
23 scarves
39 hats
1 neckwarmer
1 pr of socks
3 blankets
and we brought and made memory pillows - we ended up distributing approximately 50 memory pillows! We hope to have 350 to distribute next year.

We also raised some money for TAPS. We asked for a $5 donation for each student - and each student got a skein of yarn, a crochet hook or a pair of knitting needles, instruction sheet and lessons from our volunteers. Additionally, some people gave us donations for memory pillows. We also donated some items for the TAPS final auction. We raised over $200 for TAPS!

So - donation total: 117 knit/crochet items and $205

But, wait . . . here's more pictures of our volunteers teaching at TAPS

Here are more pictures of the people Knitters and Crocheters taught at TAPS:

Knitters and Crocheters Care's participation at the TAPS event was truly a success! We have been asked to participate again next year - and I was thrilled to tell the people at TAPS that we would definitely be there (www.taps.org for anyone who would like to check them out).

I have lots of pictures and stories from the event - so I'll upload them over a few days, as I don't want to overwhelm anyone (including myself).

The exhibit hall was much quieter and more serious on Friday - and was much more cheerful and lively on Sunday. At one point on Sunday our booth was surrounded by people talking and laughing and learning to knit and crochet. It was very interesting to see how people attending the TAPS event changed over the three days. We taught a few people on Friday who looked lonely, sad and confused. When these people stopped by again on Sunday, we noticed a change in mood and attitude. The participants were more positive and proactive in the way they approached things. Generally, they were also showing more pride in their own appearances and were taking much better care of themselves. I am not naive - I know that the program as a whole is what helped these people to begin healing - but for some of them, we were a part of that healing.

Almost everyone at TAPS is a volunteer. The first year, you participate as a survivor. However, when you come back after the first year, you are a survivor and you are also a volunteer. While many of the stories we heard were heartbreaking, it was also uplifting to see how the TAPS program gave people the skills to cope with their loss. Knitters and Crocheters Care was part of the Exhibit Hall - and most of the exhibits concerned creative ways to deal with grief. The TAPS program is truly amazing and I'd like to do whatever I can to continue helping.

Next year, I'd like to bring approximately 350 memory pillows and more donations for the silent auction. I'll be posting about these goals throughout the next year.



I taught this woman to crochet 3 years ago, at a TAPS event. She had lost her husband and her mother both within a short amount of time before that year's TAPS event. She told me she wanted to honor her mother by learning to crochet. So, I gave her and her friend a quick lesson. When she got home, she bought a pattern book and made this aghan. She called it her grief afghan

Three years later, this woman is totally addicted to crocheting! She made the following beautiful afghan and donated it to TAPS for their silent auction

You can make a difference over Memorial Day Weekend.

Volunteers are Needed to teach knitting and Crocheting at TAPS over Memorial Day Weekend - on May 25, 26, and 27I need to get quite a few volunteers in a pretty short period of time - so please pass this along to your friends and group members - to all knitters and crocheters who might be interested!

The amazing people at TAPS (Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors) have asked Knitters and Crocheters Care to teach knitting and crocheting at the 13th Annual National Military Survivor Seminar being held Memorial Day Weekend, 2007 in Crystal City, Virginia. They have asked us to discuss the therapeutic benefits of knitting and crochet and also to teach crochet/knitting from the point of view of a healing hands type of craft and from a community building perspective.

We will have a booth in their support area - and the booth needs to be staffed on
Friday, May 25: 9-5
Saturday, May 26: 9-5
Sunday, May 27: 9-2

Knitters and Crocheters Care is seeking volunteer knit and/or crochet teachers who would like to teach garter stitch (knitting lesson) or single crochet (crochet lesson) at these sessions. Kits will be provided by Knitters and Crocheters Care. If you're interested in teaching at this event, please contact Claire Wudowsky as soon as possible at Knitters_and_Crocheters_Care@yahoo.com or call her at 571-332-3804.

TAPS (http://www.taps.org) provides a wide variety of programs and information to survivors, military and casualty personnel and others. Each Memorial Day weekend, all those affected by a death in the line of military duty are invited to Arlington, Virginia to attend three days of sharing, coping, and healing with some of America's leading experts on trauma and grief. We are honored that the people at TAPS have asked us to participate in this program.This event is being held at the DoubleTree Hotel, 300 Army Navy Drive, Crystal City (Arlington), VA