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Knitted Knockers! Coming To Your Area….

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Knitted prosthetic breasts for mastectomy patients. Sounds silly, doesn’t it? Yet, when placed in a bra, these knitted breasts take the shape and feel of a real breast. They are lighter and more comfortable than silicone prosthetic breasts. The knitted fabric breathes and prevents the heat rash experienced by many women wearing the silicone ones.

Did you know that just one silicone prosthetic breast costs between $300 and $500?! Without health insurance, they are out of the reach of most breast cancer survivors. Even those with insurance are limited to a new prosthetic breast every two years. If it springs a leak that is not covered by the warranty, you are out of luck.

With a knitted breast, you can have a different one for every day of the week. Perhaps add a little embroidery for that tattoo you always wanted!

It is our goal to get knitting knocker groups started in as many places as possible to  reach as many women as possible.

If you’ve started a group, let them know! We’ll post your information so that knitters and survivors can find each other. From The Knitting Experience Cafe.

Comments

  1. Well I just had to laugh my head off at this post’s title, in all it’s seriousness there is the humour too.. I am so pleased that something so seriously can be given in such a humorous way.. It certainly caught my attention!!

    I will be sharing this post, its such a fabulous idea.. I can’t image women who have lost breast, but I can share this post so that people are aware that a ‘knitted knocker’ is a really practical idea…

    Thank you for sharing I hope this post spread more awareness.

  2. what a fabulous idea. I am going to share it with my knitting buddies, as well as the local Breast Cancer groups here in Sarasota.. maybe we can get a group going!

  3. I love it. How do I get more information and patterns on these? I know 3 yarn stores in my area and would love to try to get them involved.
    Sandi
    impatientcajun.blogspot.com

  4. I just had a double mastectomy in November and and currently undergoing Chemo through July – then hopefully reconstruction. In the mean time I did get silicone prostheses and they were $400 PER SIDE! It is true they are hot and heavy… I imagine it will be worse in the summer. These are actually a very sweet idea. I think they would be good for wearing at home so I don’t look disfigured but can still be comfy. Thanks for all who help ladies in need. Blessings to you all.

Have you read?

Knit a Leopard Print Shawl and Learn about Yarn Substitution

When I was looking around for free knitting patterns to share recently, I came across this fun leopard print wrap from Yarnspirations. 

This fun bulky wrap gives you tons of practice with instarsia and makes a bold statement while keeping you warm. It’s rated for intermediate knitters and the design is charted but pretty easy to follow. And it’s only 50 rows and worked in bulky yarn, so it wouldn’t even take that long to knit. (You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations.)

So what’s the problem? The yarn that the pattern calls for has been discontinued, and it’s not a yarn that a substitute for immediately springs to mind. 

The original yarn was Patons Alpaca Blend, a single ply bulky yarn that was a combination of acrylic, superwash wool, nylon and alpaca. 

My first thought was Lion Brand Hue + Me, which is an acrylic and wool blend, with two plies instead of a single. It looks like it has the colors you would need to make this fun shawl. 

But as I was thinking about it, I thought this would be a good opportunity to introduce you to YarnSub if you don’t already know about it. This website is a giant database of yarn that can consider the qualities of the yarn you want to substitute and offer potential substitutions. 

It’s not only thinking about yarn weight, like I was, but also fiber content, number of plies, gauge and even the difference in yardage between one ball and another. It even looks at the price and can be filtered by your price range or preferences about fiber content (if, say, you’re sensitive or allergic to wool, for example, or don’t want to you acrylic). 

When I plugged in Alpaca Blend, it gave me a lot of different options, though many of them were self-striping or multicolored, which wouldn’t work for this project, and I don’t see a way to filter for solid colors only. 

Still, it’s a good tool to give you some ideas you might not know about or might have forgotten about, and it tells you how the new yarn is similar to the old one and how it differs, allowing you to make smarter choices when substituting yarns. 

[Photo: Yarnspirations]