Fifty Hats = Fifty Warm Babies

For Will's first birthday, I came up with the idea of giving back for the blessing that we have received.  After some thinking, we decided to sponsor a baby food drive for a local council here in town.   Friends and family donated baby food to our home for hungry babies in Central Massachusetts.  We collected quite a bit and were thrilled with the work with we had done.

After Sean was born, we again wished to give back to the community.  This time, I wanted to utilize some skills and creativity, not to mention my ever-growing yarn stash!   Through a self-disciplined project, I pledged to make fifty baby hats for Stitches from the Heart.  This would allow for me to warm the heads of fifty newborn babies, and to practice some new skills and learn new stitches.  And to commemorate Sean's first birthday (which was on January 10th), the hats are now complete and will be on their way this week!

Why baby hats?  Babies need a little warm hat when they're first born.  As anyone who's ever lived in a cold-weather climate, you lose a lot of heat through an uncovered noggin.  And there are a lot of babies that are born whose parents can barely afford diapers, let alone "extras" like warm lil' baby hats and other things.    Plus, when I came up with the idea, I was a relatively new knitter.  I had done scarves and blankets and other items with straight edges.  I had just made two newborn hats for Sean and I was  tickled that I was able to create something that wasn't a square or a rectangle!  In the beginning, I vowed to use just stash yarn and bits and pieces from leftover projects.  However, I was easily seduced by the baby yarn aisle and bought a few skeins along the way.  Baby yarn is extremely alluring.  And luckily, fairly cheap and satisfying.

The hats are in all different sizes, from preemies to newborns with larger heads.  They are all variations of a basic pattern or two that I have used.  Some have seed stitch borders, some are ribbed, some are just plain stockinette.  Two of the hats are donated by my very cool friends, Kim and Kristina.  In the interest of washability, all of these hats are cotton, acrylic, or a blend of these two. Plus, newborn babies really don't like wool and preemies, who need hats the most, cannot tolerate wool at all.

A selection of preemie hats

I am so proud to have finished this project!  It feels really good to give back for the gift that we have received.