Published May 2005

Nurse turns cancer battle
into outreach

By Kimberly Hilden
SCBJ Assistant Editor

When Nan Sarb is not working at The Everett Clinic, teaching in the nursing assistant program at Edmonds Community College or sitting on the Department of Defense’s Scientific Peer Review, the licensed practical nurse can be found knitting.

Knitting chemo caps for The Everett Clinic Cancer Center, shawls for Hospice and Home Care and dish cloths for Housing Hope — and coordinating more than 90 volunteers to do the same as part of Community Yarn Creations, a nonprofit organization Sarb created earlier this year.

Snohomish County Business Journal/ KIMBERLY HILDEN “The idea is that you give and donate within your community. I want to give back to the community that helped me,” said Nan Sarb, a licensed practical nurse with The Everett Clinic who started the nonprofit Community Yarn Creations earlier this year.

It all started with a December 2004 e-mail she sent out to co-workers at The Everett Clinic asking if a dozen or so people would like to volunteer their knitting skills to create garments for community organizations. By mid-January there were 92 volunteers on Sarb’s e-mail list.

“The world has turned upside down ever since,” said Sarb, who learned to sew when she was 15 but began knitting in earnest when she was diagnosed with a rare form of breast cancer two years ago. She found that knitting gave her quiet time to reflect and relax. It also helped her work through her arm pain that resulted from the double mastectomy that was part of her treatment.

“My kids told me I got morbid. I started knitting baby sweaters for my grandchildren, which I don’t have yet,” said Sarb, the mother of three sons, ages 14, 17 and 24.

Then a co-worker asked Sarb to teach her to knit, and they both began knitting scarves for The Everett Clinic’s annual craft fair, with the women donating $5 to a women’s cancer organization for every scarf sold.

She took that philanthropic action a step further after attending her second “Life Beyond Cancer” retreat, an event in which women cancer survivors focus on wellness and community advocacy.

“I sold three scarves during the weekend. A woman there said, ‘Don’t you see, this is your advocacy,’” said Sarb, who sent out that fateful e-mail just a couple of weeks later.

In January, Sarb applied for and received nonprofit status for her organization.

She said the next goal is to earn 501(c)(3) designation, but money will need to be raised to make that goal a reality.

For now, Sarb e-mails knitting patterns to volunteers once a month, with the knitting project bound for a pre-determined community group. Volunteers have the option of working on their own or meeting monthly at the Village Yarn & Tea Shop in Shoreline or at Main Street Yarns in Mill Creek.

“The idea is that you give and donate within your community,” Sarb said. “I want to give back to the community that helped me.”

Each time a volunteer turns in a project, that knitter is entered into Community Yarn Creations’ Volunteer of the Month drawing for a prize. It is Sarb’s way of showing appreciation for the work volunteers do.

“They’re just being so nice, so giving of their time,” she said.

In January, volunteers pooled their efforts to create 83 chemo caps for The Everett Clinic Cancer Center, with one mother-and-daughter team volunteering their time and skills to make gift tags for each of the caps.

Other projects on Community Yarn Creations’ calendar are infant caps for the Providence Pavilion for Women and Children’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit as well as kitten and puppy blankets for PAWS and other local animal shelters, Sarb said.

In the months since starting the nonprofit group, Sarb’s message of community outreach has surpassed even her own wildest dreams, touching the hearts and fueling the passion of others nationwide.

“A woman in Austin, Texas, who runs a cancer resource center is looking to start her own chapter, and a woman in New York City already has 20 women ready to volunteer for a chapter of their own,” she said.

Today, Sarb is busier than ever.

She has been working with a Web designer to establish an Internet presence for Community Yarn Creations, and she is working with the folks at the Village Yarn & Tea Shop to get yarn manufacturers to donate their yarn to the cause.

“It is too overwhelming,” Sarb said of the past few months. “It is so beyond what I imagined.”

For more information on Community Yarn Creations, call 425-787-0736, send e-mail to communityyarncreations@gmail.com or go online to www.communityyarncreations.org.

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