After Cancer, I Needed Something to Do With My Hands
There is a spot on the end of my couch that has been mine for as long as I can remember. That is where I knit. That is where I think. That is where I work through whatever needs working through, with yarn in my hands and a cat or two somewhere in the vicinity. Knitting is not just a hobby for me. It is how I process things. It is how I find my way through hard stuff, one stitch at a time.
So after my mastectomy in September 2017, when I could not lift my arms enough to knit, I did not know what to do with myself.
It sounds small. It was not small. Every tiny movement in my underarm and chest was effort. The nerve endings that had been cut during surgery were making themselves known in ways I had not anticipated, and the micro-movements that knitting requires, the ones you never even think about until they hurt, were simply not available to me yet. So I sat in my spot on the couch with an iPad on my lap instead of needles in my hands, and I did the only thing I could do. I started looking up ways to help other people going through what I had just been through.
If you have read my mastectomy story here on the blog, you know that year was a whole thing. I am not going to re-tell it here. What I will say is that when you come out the other side of something like that, you tend to have a lot of feelings and not quite enough to do with them. My husband was there. My sister had been my nurse and my advocate through every step. My knitting buddy had been a phone call away when I needed to cry at someone. Those three people and my Twitch community were my world through all of it, and I am grateful for every single one of them. But the wider world just kept moving along at its normal pace, and my life was anything but normal, and I needed something to do with that gap.
The Couch, the iPad, and a Search for Something to Make
I knew I wanted to knit something that would help people going through cancer treatment. Knitting is my thing. It has always been my thing. So I started with what I knew, which was Warm Up America, an organization I had made blankets for in the past. Chemo afghans seemed like an obvious place to start. I had spent hours in a chemo room and I knew how cold those rooms get. There was always a basket of afghans near the chairs, and reaching for one when you are cold and exhausted and sitting there for hours means something.
But the more I thought about it, the more I worried. People in active chemo treatment have compromised immune systems. A shared blanket that has been handled by strangers, however well-intentioned, felt like the wrong thing. And the chemo centers already had warm hospital blankets available if you wanted one. I wanted to make something that belonged to one person. Something just for her.
So I kept searching. Beanies came up, and beanies are wonderful, I thought about those too. But then I found KnittedKnockers.org, and I stopped searching.
I scrolled through the website reading about what they were and how they worked, and my first reaction was to laugh. I had just lost my breast, and here was this cheerful, round, slightly absurd-looking little knitted thing, and it was called a Knocker, and it was the most perfect thing I had ever seen. Soft knitted prosthetics made by volunteers and given away free to any woman who needed one. Comfortable against healing skin and scars. Washable. Adjustable. Available in every size. Made with cotton so no one had to worry about allergies.
I found their approved yarn list. I found the pattern. I ordered the yarn that same day.
And I also decided right then that mine would not have nipples. I mean, why would they? I only have one in real life at this point, women spend a fortune on bras specifically designed to hide nipples, and a Knocker without one is just cleaner and more practical. As it turns out, most women who request Knockers prefer them that way. So nipple-free it was, and nipple-free they have remained ever since.
The First Ones Were a Little Wonky
When the yarn arrived, my hands were almost back. Recovery had been slow and careful and I had eased back into knitting gradually over the weeks before, testing what my arms could do, finding the edges of what still hurt. By the time the cotton yarn showed up at my door, I was close enough to normal that I could actually use it.
The first Knockers I made were a little wonky. The pattern was easy to follow but the shaping took some practice, and what came off my needles in those early attempts was more lumpy than round. But I kept making them, because that is what you do with knitting. You make the wonky ones until they stop being wonky. Nine years later I can tell you the difference is significant.
When I had made a few I liked, I brought them to my Twitch stream. I just held them up one day and showed them to the chat. They are genuinely cute and fun to hold, and I explained what they were and how they were used and told my community I had found my charity project. These were not strangers. These were the people who had watched me show up on stream bald, who had sat with me through hard updates and celebrated good news, who had cried with me and laughed with me through an entire year of treatment. They understood immediately why I had landed on this particular thing to make. They wanted in.
So Foob Friday was born. FOOB stands for Fake Boob, which on Twitch where you have to be a little creative about certain words, was exactly the right workaround. We had our own emoji in chat, two lemons side by side with a Ghostbusters-style slash through the left one. If you have read my mastectomy story you already know about my left boob. My chat certainly did. That emoji had a whole year of history inside it.
Every Friday I would throw up the Foob Friday graphics on screen, feed the cats their treats, and we would all make Knockers together. We kept a tracking spreadsheet. Of course we did. By the time I stepped back from streaming in 2021, our group had made 778 Knitted Knockers together. One viewer, Lacey, had made 383 of those herself. At the bottom of that spreadsheet, in big blue letters, I typed “YOU GUYS ROCK, SERIOUSLY, THANK YOU FROM ALL OF US WHO HAVE BEEN THROUGH CANCER AND NEED THESE BEAUTIES.” That was the only thing that came close to being adequate.
The Wicker Baskets and the Doctors Who Had Never Heard of Them
For my six-month oncology and breast surgeon checkups I started doing something a little extra. I would show up not just as a patient, but carrying Knockers to leave behind.
The first time I brought them to my breast surgeon, I had put together a proper little setup. Pretty wicker baskets with the Knockers arranged inside, each one with a small tag pinned to the back listing the cup size. Neutral colors and bright colors both, because women have different preferences and should get to choose. A small sign that said Free, Take One. My Knitted Knockers business card with my phone number on it. It looked like something you might find in a lovely boutique, which was exactly the point.
She had never heard of Knitted Knockers. This is a woman who performs mastectomies. I let her hold one, explained it was cotton so no one had to worry about wool allergies, showed her how the stuffing could be removed so the whole thing could be washed, walked her through the different sizes. She was amazed. She took everything I brought and told me she would absolutely give them to her patients.
My oncologist had the same reaction. Never seen them, never heard of them, genuinely delighted to have something soft and free and practical to offer the women he was treating.
After that first visit I simplified the system. Shopping bags instead of wicker baskets, with zip-lock bags inside organized by size. Four or five of each cup size per bag, a mix of singles and pairs, neutral colors and bright ones. Fifteen to twenty Knockers each visit to each doctor, every six months, for almost nine years. If you do that math it gets to be a significant number of mornings on the couch with cotton yarn and two circular needles.
At some point my oncologist’s office started giving my name and phone number directly to patients who reached out asking about them. I would get a call, make up a batch, and deliver them myself. Standing in that waiting room with a bag of Knockers I had made, for women I had never met, in the office where I once sat as a patient myself, is a particular kind of full-circle feeling.
The Pattern That Ended Up on Their Website
I have a thing about double-pointed needles. They work perfectly well and plenty of excellent knitters love them. I am not one of those knitters. I prefer working on two circular needles, and the original Knitted Knockers pattern was written for double points.
So I adapted it. I sat down and worked out how to make the same Knocker on two circulars, wrote up the instructions, filmed two tutorial videos walking through every step, and shared it with my Twitch community first. Then I contacted Knitted Knockers the organization and told them what I had done. They wanted it. We worked out the details and both videos and the adapted pattern ended up on their official website.
Right now on KnittedKnockers.org, alongside patterns that have hundreds of thousands of downloads, there is a listing that reads “Adapting the DPN pattern to using 2 Circular Needles. For use with video by Jenny Knits.” That pattern has been downloaded more than sixteen thousand times. Sixteen thousand people have used something I worked out at home to make Knockers for women they will never meet. I find that number hard to sit with for very long without it becoming a little overwhelming.
If you want to learn to make them or just watch how they are made, the full step-by-step playlist is on my JennyKnits YouTube channel. You do not need to be an advanced knitter. The pattern is easy to follow and the yarn requirements are simple. You just need to want to do it.
Eighty Women, Two Baskets, and One Introvert
A woman contacted me after finding my name on the Knitted Knockers website. She was organizing a monthly luncheon for her group and asked if I would come speak about the project. I said yes before I fully understood what I was agreeing to.
I calculated maybe 6 women plus me and her, I can talk to 7 women easily. After I said YES, She mentioned there would be around sixty women. Sixty women. A crafty group at a luncheon. What?!? What have I done?
We made the arrangements and I was hoping she wouldn’t call me back. Well, she did a few weeks before the date, and I couldn’t say no. So I made a big batch of Knockers, put together bags of information and materials to hand out, and told myself it would be fine.
I walked in and there were eighty women.
Seated at round tables in green because it was close to St. Patrick’s Day, plates half cleared, and eighty people turning to look at me as I walked to the front of the room. These were snowbirds, women who spend their winters in Florida in RVs and campers and have built a whole traveling community around each other. Many of them were crafty. Many of them were exactly the age of women who had been through breast cancer, or were watching someone they loved go through it right now.
I had already set up the baskets in the back of the room, put out the Free, Take One sign, and now I was ready to talk. I answered more questions than I could count. I watched women get up from their tables and walk to the back of the room to look at a Knocker or take one home. Somewhere in the middle of all of it I stopped being nervous, because I realized this was not a speech. It was just my story, told to a room full of women who understood why it mattered. The cancer survivors all came over to tell me their stories and I listened and hugged and congratulated each one on their journey. They were all so warm and friendly.
I am not a public speaker. Up to this point, I had only sat at my desk streaming to the world, but sitting alone in my office as I knit. But some things matter more than being comfortable, and this was one of them.
2.3 Million People and One Very Good Title
A while back I made an Instagram reel. I held up a Knocker, explained what it was and how it was made, talked about the cotton yarn being soft against healing skin and scars and easy to wash, and told people they are given away free to any woman who asks. The opening line was “I’m about to show you my knockers.”
I knew exactly what I was doing.
That reel has 2.3 million views. After it started moving I got messages and requests from women everywhere, and I made up batches and mailed them out to the ones I could reach directly. For most requests, I point people toward KnittedKnockers.org, where women can request Knockers from the organization, because the need is enormous. They send out over a thousand every single month to women all over the world. There is no shortage of women who need them, and there is never a shortage of need for more hands willing to make them.
Nine Years on the End of the Couch
I am still in my spot. Still on the end of the couch, still knitting, still processing whatever needs processing one stitch at a time. The pair I mailed out a few weeks ago are the most recent in nine years of Knockers, and they look nothing like those first wonky ones.
Finding purpose after breast cancer, or after any hard season, does not tend to arrive as a dramatic moment of clarity. It is more often something smaller than that. A search on an iPad in a spot on the couch where you can’t yet do the thing you love most. A funny-looking little pattern that makes you laugh right when you needed to. Yarn ordered on a whim, a first attempt that comes out lopsided, and then another and another until they come out right.
If you knit or crochet and you are looking for a project that means something, I hope you will look into this one. If you have had a mastectomy and did not know Knitted Knockers existed, now you do, and you can request a pair at KnittedKnockers.org. And if you want to watch me make them, the playlist is waiting for you on JennyKnits.
There is always more need than there are hands to fill it. Your hands might as well be part of that.
Want to read more about my experiences after 50? Go check out how I Flew In From Across the Country to Smell a Mail Slot or How I Rebuilt Motivation After 50 When My Spark Was Gone.
