2013 GoogleServe

Here's a nice article from the Newport Beach Independent about our 2013 GoogleServe efforts.

‘GoogleServe’ Week Benefits Local Charity  

Knots of love volunteers sorting through the Google caps, as seen through Google Glass.

A local non-profit, Knots of Love, received 101 caps from a group of Google employees recently as part of their global week of service, “GoogleServe.”
...
“We chose Knots of Love because knitting/crocheting hats is a way that we can use our skills to give a bit of comfort and warmth to people undergoing chemotherapy,” said senior software engineer Liz Looney, who led the crafty club of Googlers that made the donation.
...
The contribution helped set a personal record for Knots of Love of most caps donated and shipped out in one day: A total of 1,050.

GoogleServe 2014 is coming up soon, and we aim to break last year's 101-hat record!

Hats for charity, 2012

For a week every June, Googlers are encouraged to spend a day helping a charity. Like last year, knitters and crocheters in Seattle, Kirkland, Mountain View, San Bruno, and San Francisco made chemo caps—soft caps to be given to cancer patients who've lost hair due to chemotherapy.

We set a west coast goal of 75 hats, and Mountain View alone passed that goal! (Many of us spent a lot of non-work hours on these hats.)

Mountain View's hats

Not that we're keeping track by site, but... Next year the Mountain View knitters are considering challenging the ROW (rest of world) to beat Mountain View's total.

Best Schwag Ever

As Guy says, the best schwag is schwag you make yourself.

Guy's awesome Google socks

Followup: The final chemo cap tally

Here's the followup we promised in our earlier post about chemo caps.

Labeled hats in San Bruno

We ended up donating at least 84 hats, plus three scarves:

• Knitting Pals by the Bay: 59 hats, 1 scarf
• Palo Alto Medical Foundation: 10 hats, 2 scarves
• Overlake Hospital Medical Center: 15 hats

45 Mountain View hats

Some of San Francisco's hats

Hats (and coffee) in Seattle

A knitting day of service

Once a year, our company encourages everyone to spend a workday volunteering. This year, knitters and crocheters in Seattle, Kirkland, Mountain View, San Bruno, and San Francisco decided to make chemo caps—soft caps to be given to cancer patients who've lost hair due to chemotherapy.

Mountain View

San Bruno

We're still tallying the results (the last date to contribute is in July), but some of us (hello, Guy!) worked overtime and finished many hats. We tended to knit stockinette, roll brim hats (either top-down or bottom-up), but some of Guy's many hats had 3x1 or 2x2 ribbing (he says 2x2 has better stretchiness).

Guy wearing one of his 7 hats

Ange knit a couple of Race for Life 2009 chemo caps, which are mostly stockinette but with a pretty lace edge. In fact, the first cap was so pretty that now Ange's sister wants one. Ange's wearing one of those caps in this photo:

Back row: Ange, Liz, Jennifer
Front row: Patsy, Kathy

Liz increased too much on her first top-down hat, so she decided to turn it into a design element. She decreased to the right size, then knit even for a while and finished with a rolled brim. The hats look a little like fat-stemmed mushrooms (in a good way; see the photo above). Liz is planning to publish the instructions on Ravelry, and we'll let you know when they're available.

Last I checked, Mountain View (our biggest campus) had nearly 30 finished hats, San Bruno had about a dozen, Seattle/Kirkland had 15, and San Francisco had 6 (plus a couple of scarves). We'll post more pics and a final tally in July!

A braided cowl

A little while ago, Patsy wore her braided cowl to our meeting.

Patsy in her cowl

Her cowl is based on one that was on the cover of the Winter 2010/2011 Knit Simple magazine [obligatory Ravelry link]. Here's what Patsy had to say:

Basically I wanted to use up stash. I had a limited amount of yarn in three colors, so I changed the pattern from stockinette to garter so I could reduce the width of the braid. Originally the pattern called for knitting a big, flat stockinette rectangle that you sewed into a tube. By switching to garter stitch, I didn't need to working about curling edges, so I could knit a smaller rectangle.

I knit one rectangle per color, sewed the three rectangles together, braided them, and then sewed down the loose ends. I love the color combo. It reminds me of raspberry sorbet. 

Thanks for the details, Patsy!

Spinning with a charkha

Ange brought a pretty little box to one of our lunches, opened it up, and within minutes was spinning yarn!

The box contained a small charkha—a portable, hand-cranked spinning wheel good for spinning cotton and other short-staple fibers.

Apparently, the charkha was an important tool and symbol in the Indian independence movement. It provided a way of producing cotton cloth without having to ship it off to the English cotton mills. Mahatma Gandhi popularized the charkha (as in this video of Gandhi spinning), and early versions of the Indian flag included a charkha.

If you think I've been misspelling chakra this whole time, you're not far off. Charkha and chakra have the same origin, from the old Persian word for "wheel".