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.

The Knit 15 Challenge

Here I am at the end of July, and I am finally paying some attention to the blog! Oh well, at least I managed to post once this month.

My main reason for writing this post is to show you what I have been knitting during the past couple of weeks, and to perhaps inspire you to think about knitting for a good cause.

This is my current in-progress Mother Bear, Mother Bear #7 (link is to my Ravelry project page). As you can see, she still needs some work; another arm, a face, a skirt, some stuffing. I'm knitting her for a wonderful charity effort, the Mother Bear Project, that brings comfort—in the form of bears—to children in developing nations who are affected by AIDS.

I've been knitting Mother Bears off and on for several years, and the biggest reward for me is seeing the faces of the children when they receive my bears. Here is my latest bear to find her forever friend; so sweet!

If you want to see more examples of the happiness that a bear can bring, check out the photos on the Mother Bear Project's Flickr photostream. I guarantee that those kids will put a smile on your face.

My most recent bear knitting was inspired by my friend, Jill, who is Jillsknit on Ravelry. She has started what she is calling the Knit 15 Challenge. The idea is to spend 15 minutes a day knitting for charity. She saw it as a way to rediscover your knitting mojo if it has gone missing, but even if you have mojo to spare, knitting to help others is also a great way to help yourself, too.

I'd love to see other knitters pick up the challenge. Even if you don't do charity knitting for 15 minutes every day, give it a try when you can. If you post a photo of your charity knitting on Instagram, use the hashtags #knit15 and #knit15challenge.

I have been doing some other charity knitting lately, and I'll be back with more information—and inspiration, too, I hope—soon.