Spirit of Giving: Personalized hats bring smiles to SBES kids
By Wayne E. Rivet
Staff Writer
Caitlin Reum put a smile on children’s faces this holiday season and helped keep them warm this winter.
Madelyn Hanna’s first grade class at Stevens Brook Elementary School recently received personalized knitted hats, which Caitlin worked on in her spare time between two jobs, one being her own company, Wildwood Designs ME.
“I was browsing Facebook and came across a post in a group about someone doing the same thing for their child’s class,” she said. “I just thought it sounded so fun and wanted to give it a try myself!”
Each child was given a sheet with a hat outline. They were asked to color in five rows, as well as a pom-pom.
“Color me in to design your own hat,” the instructions read. “Use as many or as few colors are you’d like.”
Caitlin used a circular knitting machine to make the hats, so it took about 30 minutes to produce each hat.
“I worked on a few hats each night during the course of about a week,” Caitlin said. “I also hand-knit hats and those can take a few hours each, sometimes, so the machine definitely helped save time!”
Unfortunately, Caitlin didn’t get to see the youngsters’ reactions when they were given their colorful hats.
“I dropped the hats off one morning when I was bringing my daughter (Riley, age 7) to school,” Caitlin said. “I heard all about how excited they were later that day from my daughter’s teacher Ms. Hanna! She said they were a big hit!”
Indeed, they were, students said.
“It was so awesome (designing my hat) because it is fun to color and get a new hat,” said Tucker.
“I really like my hat because it is all my favorite colors,” Zoey added.
On receiving the hats, Lydia said, “It was so exciting because I was so excited to check them out,” while Trinity said, “I was so excited because I didn’t know her mom could actually make hats!”
On being grateful, Isla said, “I really like mine. Thank you!”
“It feels good because she did something really nice,” Killian added.
Miss Hanna saw the joy the holiday gifts brought to her students. “I feel so grateful that Caitlin did this for the students. It has been so awesome seeing their little rainbow heads running around on the playground!”
“It made me so happy to hear that they loved their hats! Seeing their smiling faces in the picture just made my day!” Caitlin said.
Caitlin’s mom taught her how to crochet when she was a child, and six years ago, she learned how to knit, which she finds “relaxing and therapeutic.”
“I love being able to express my creativity through yarn,” she noted.
“Back in 2015, I decided to try out being a vendor at a craft show to sell all the stuff that I had made and collected over the years. I really enjoyed it,” Caitlin said. “Eight years later, I’m still doing fall craft shows in the Lake Region area. I love seeing returning customers every year and their smiling faces when they come buy a hat from me!”
Caitlin’s kindness, creativity and spirit created a little Christmas magic for 15 SBES kids, whose smiles while proudly wearing their self-designed hats reminds all what the holiday season is all about.
People can find more about Caitlin and her products at:
