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Helmet liners for the troops

March 6th, 2010

Calling all knitters – we need helmet liners for the troops!!
We currently have more than 200,000 troops in overseas theaters where they are subjected to sub-zero wind chills during the winter. Please help us have a warm helmet liner for each one of these troops before next winter. There are several organizations which collect helmet liners and provide them to the US Army. We are working with Citizen Sam to collect these helmet liners and send it to them. Citizen Sam has collected more than 20,000 helmet liners but you can see that we have a long way to go.

If you can knit, please consider making helmet liners for our troops. It must be 100% wool, as acrylic yarn is flammable and would endanger the troops should injury occur. Only black, charcoal, brown, tan, gray or combinations of these colors are allowed by our Armed Forces. This blends with their camo and helps keep them safe. Please save your label and pin it to the helmet liner so that the person receiving it knows the care instructions and the fiber used for the helmet liner. The pattern for the helmet liner was written by Bonnie Long of Knit Wits and is available free of charge for the purpose of knitting the helmet liners. We also have printed them out and copies are available at the store.
The instructions on the pattern say you can ship this to Citizen Sam directly. Nine Rubies is also collecting them and sending them to Citizen Sam which will save you a step. We will sending out one shipment on March 31st, 2010 and a second one on October 31st, 2010. Just drop off your knitted helmet liner when you are done with it.
The following stores in the Bay Area are having helmet liner drives that I know of:
1. The Knitting Room
1195 Branham Lane
San Jose, California

2. Yarn Boutique
963 C Moraga Rd.
Lafayette, California

3. Yarndogs
151 E. Main St.
Los Gatos, California

4. Nine Rubies Knitting
28 E. 3rd Avenue, #100
San Mateo California

Please check their websites for the details of their helmet drives. They are all donating to different organizations but to make it easier for you, we have several yarn stores who will be helping out with this. Thank you.

Entry Filed under: General