Save the Children Campaign

Well, I was going to write a report about my weekend activities this morning, complete with pictures. But then my local paper actually ran a knitting article yesterday that I want to post about, so the weekend activities will have to wait until tomorrow.

Apparently, Save the Children (located in Connecticut) has joined with Warm Up America to recruit knitters and crocheters to create baby hats for newborns around the world. Their goal is to have 75,000 crafters involved in the project. They are asking that the hats be ready to go by January 7th, 2007, when they are going to be delivered to the White House and then distributed around the globe. The hats can be made of any yarn that is easily washable, and they should be a little smaller than normal, since many babies around the world are born with a low birth weight, even if they are carried to term. They are asking for a circumference of 9"-10", which sounds to me like a large preemie hat. There is more information and some patterns at both websites.

Ok, so, maybe I am reading other blogs too much, but this call for baby caps made me think about something that has been going on over at Shelly Kang's blog. She is making a mitered squares blanket out of fingering yarn, and she put out a call for everyone's leftover sock yarn to help her finish her blanket. Well, last week Stephanie McPhee, a.k.a. the Yarn Harlot, picked up on her plea and suggested that her readers "bury Shelly's house" with yarn. So, now all I can think about is burying the White House in baby caps! Isn't that a great image? And goodness knows there are enough babies in the world who need the caps. So, how about it? Are we up to this challenge? This might be a fun, low-key knit & crochet along. No deadlines other than January 7th, and we could just encourage each other to keep knitting and crocheting. And it will dovetail nicely with the charity projects I take part in through my crochet guild - preemie items for the hospital and hats, mittens, scarves and baby items for the Salvation Army.

I am running out of time this morning, but later in the week I will try to put up a couple of patterns that I have used to make preemie hats that could be easily adapted to this project, and that I personally think might be a little more flexible than the patterns offered by the aforementioned organizations.