Diane Jackson calls it putting love in a child’s heart, although the casual observer might mistake it for knitting.

Each Thursday, more than a dozen ladies gather in the back room of the Steaming Bean, a Silverthorne coffee shop, to chat, to knit but mostly to provide some warmth always to each other but more importantly to children being treated at Children’s Hospital in Denver.In the year since the group gathered for the first time, more than 1,500 hats have been knitted and sent to the children undergoing chemotherapy. Although some were donated from other knitters in the area, most were knitted by the ladies at the Steaming Bean.

Recently at the request of the hospital the group also began knitting lap blankets.

Jackson said the group also knitted hats for the newborns at the Summit Medical Center birthing center and hats for children staying at “Brent’s House,” which is adjacent to the cancer center at Children’s. “It seems this just keeps growing and growing,” she said.The group meets at 2 p.m. and is open to anyone who wants to take part.