A Finished Bear, and Lots and Lots of Hats

I want to let you know that the faceless, armless, skirtless, unstuffed Mother Bear that you saw in the last post did get finished and has already been sent off to the Mother Bear Project in Minnesota. Soon she will be heading around the world to meet her forever friend.

Here she is, hanging out with the "house bears" before she left. I named her Ibby—short for Elizabeth—in honor and memory of my wonderful Aunt Ibby.

This is not the only charity knitting that has been going on around here. This is my third year of knitting purple baby hats for the Click for Babies program, which distributes the hats along with information about "the period of purple crying" that many infants experience in the first months of life. The program is affiliated with the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome. You can find out more about the program here.

I learned about Click for Babies a couple years ago and told my knitting group about it, but we got a late start, so I only sent in four hats, two knit by me and two knit by my friend, Tessa. Last year, I knit nine hats, and knitting group members contributed several more to bring our total to 14. This year was even better. My total of seven hats was down a bit from last year, but my knitting group friends (and the sister of one of them), plus two other knitting friends of mine knit a bumper crop of purple hats! Today I sent off 26 hats to the Washington State Click for Babies Program at Seattle Children's Hospital. I think it may be hard to top this number next year...

Here are my seven hats:

And here is an amazing pile of purple-ness: all 26 hats!

In my last post, I talked about the Knit 15 Challenge. Knitting hats for Click for Babies would be a good way to accomplish your 15 minutes (just sayin'). I will be sharing some other ways to #knit15 in the coming months.