Blankets comfort vets during rehab

July 28, 2009 (DES PLAINES, Ill.) (WLS) -- In the past two years, Nancy Dolatowski has crocheted hundreds of blankets for hospitalized veterans.

Instead of giving her homemade items to friends and family, Dolatowski dedicates her time, energy and blankets to veterans. She uses donated yarn to make life a little more comfortable for wounded vets home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

She started knitting the blankets about two years ago.

"I went down in my basement and dug out my yarn and said, 'What can I do with this?' So I decided, 'Hey, I could maybe make a little blanket or a smaller afghan kind of thing and maybe the veterans at the hospital might like them,'" said Dolatowski.

And they did. So Dolatowski kept with the skillfully crocheted blankets, which are the perfect size for patients in wheelchairs. How many has she made?

"I would say in the last two years I would probably say...five or six hundred blankets...I make somewhere between three and four a week," said Dolatowski.

Dolatowski is the mother of five and grandmother of 11. She and her husband celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary last September.

"It's very worthwhile what she's doing, the cause and that. What she's doing is for our veterans--their comfort," said Eleanor Zito, Dolatowski's mother.

Dolatowski is always looking for donations and visits garage sales for yarn.

"I feel my little tiny dots of contribution are making those wounded people happy...and that's all that counts," said Dolatowski.

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