Christine Price doesn’t crochet for a living. But her output is so substantial, you might presume it’s her full-time job.

Last year, she crocheted over 100 caps for Caps and Warm Covers for Cancer, an organization in western North Carolina she’s been affiliated with since 2023. Price and other volunteers make caps for adults and children undergoing cancer treatment. Her colleague, Teresa Baldwin, a certified medical assistant, calls her a “hero.”

“The first year, I brought in two kitchen bags full of caps and handed them to Mary Moore, who came up with this idea,” Price said. “She cried because she couldn’t believe a stranger had made that many.”

Price recruits other knitters to make caps, too. Her ears perk up when she hears someone say they crochet or knit. A woman in Franklin, North Carolina, who saw Price interviewed on WLOS last year contacted her about contributing. She crocheted 100 caps, mailing most of them to Price. Price also drove nearly an hour-and-a-half from her home in Fairview to donate yarn to her to make caps and pick up the blankets and caps she made.

Even people who don’t know a slip stitch from a back loop aren’t off the hook. “When people say, ‘I wish I could help, but I don't know how to crochet,’ I tell them they can help,” Price said. The group doesn’t accept cash donations, but they will gladly accept donations of yarn.

Price is picky about yarn.

“You have to use soft materials, because the cap is going on somebody’s sensitive bald head,” she said. “We make sure it’s nice and soft for the people receiving them. Yarn that’s 100% wool would be too scratchy.” She also avoids bamboo yarn, because it stretches and can lose its shape, and she looks for yarn that’s machine washable and dryable.

Way above and beyond

Price joined Novant Health Women's Specialty Care in Asheville as a nurse navigator for breast cancer patients in early 2025, but she’s been an oncology nurse since 2009.

”What really attracted me to oncology is my tendency to go way above and beyond,” she said. “And I felt like a patient going through cancer needed someone who really cared and wanted to take care of them. They deserve someone who treats this as more than just a job.”

During her last semester of nursing school, she trained on the oncology floor at Novant Health Presbyterian Medical Center in Charlotte, and knew she’d found her calling. But her family worried about the emotional toll her work might take on her. “They kept telling me: ‘You wear your heart on your sleeve; you’re going to cry a lot,’” she said. “And I have cried. But I love my job.”

Price makes no apologies for showing emotion. “Cancer is an emotional thing,” she said. “Every patient faced with a cancer diagnosis will go through a grieving process because they’re all losing something. Some patients might not be able to have children after their treatment. Some will get mastectomies and literally lose a piece of themselves. And when there’s a loss, you grieve. I want my patients to know that’s OK and that I’ll be right there with them.”

God’s work

Price is prolific, but she’s not a one-woman show. She has lots of support from her family. Her 77-year-old mom, Rhoda Robinette, crochets. So does her niece, Rebekah Anderson, 26. Last year, Robinette made over 60 warm covers, Anderson made 80 caps and Price made over 100 caps. Price’s publicity efforts led to a total of 1,000 warm head coverings in 2024.

That number was topped this year with a grand total of 1,461 caps and 288 warm covers collected.

Price also had support from her work family. “When I interviewed with Novant Health earlier this year, I told them that that if I got hired, I would need some time off in September to volunteer for Caps and Warm Covers for Cancer. I hoped it wouldn’t be a problem. Not only was it not a problem, Novant Health became a sponsor!”

Handmade caps and blankets can be dropped off at the North Carolina Mountain State Fair held every September. There’s a booth where caps are on display – although they’re not for sale – and where volunteers, including Price, tell the public about their ministry. The caps aren’t for sale; they’re all donated, but Price said, “I’ve been known to take special orders to make a cap for someone after the fair is over.”

Price doesn’t like the spotlight – “I don't want to seem like I’m bragging,” she said – but she’s willing to go public to help get more people involved.

She contends that she’s “not doing anything special” but merely “trying to treat people the way I want to be treated.”

That’s a rule she lives by. “It’s so important to me to treat – not just oncology patients, but – everyone I come across with care, kindness, love and respect,” she said. “The point is to do God's work in a way that He would want it done. I’m not a perfect Christian, but I'm a Christian, and I want to show God’s love to everyone I meet.”

Handmade and prayed over

Price never meets the people who receive the caps she makes, unless it’s by happenstance. All the caps she and the other volunteers make go to Messino Cancer Center, which handles distribution to patients in western North Carolina and to Novant Health Breast Center in Winston-Salem.

This year, Price took on the role of superintendent for the project Covers for Cancer. In addition to making caps and blankets, she led publicity efforts, recruited volunteers and spent a week as a volunteer herself at the fair, where she helped set up and staff the booth.

The caps are made with love, but there’s something else special about them recipients won’t realize. “The day before the fair, we prayed over the covers and caps both for the people who made them and for the people who’d be receiving them,” she said.

Mary Moore, who founded Covers for Cancer, led the prayer. But her husband was sick with a respiratory illness that would soon take his life, and Moore was caring for him. “Since Mary couldn’t be with us, we called and put her on speaker phone to lead the prayer,” Price said. “There was not a dry eye among us.”