Knitting

Free Patterns, Tutorials and Project Ideas

Warm Up America Seeks Tiny Hats for Africa

by

knit tiny hats for premature babies in AfricaWarm Up America is known for providing blankets and other warm goods to people across the United States, but it supports other initiatives as well, and this year it’s helping bring awareness — and hats! — to the issue of preterm birth, especially in Africa.

The group is seeking tiny hats for the East African Preterm Birth Initiative, and aims to have 1,117 hats to donate by World Prematurity Day (which is 11/17, thus the number).

More than one million preterm babies worldwide die in their first month of life, often because of an inability to keep warm. Hats are vital to protect these precious bundles, and, as a bonus, are really easy to make because they are so small.

Warm Up America is asking for hats to fit 3 or 4 pound babies, with head circumferences ranging from 10 to 12.5 inches. There are patterns on the website linked above to get you started.

Hats should be mailed by Nov. 5 to:

Warm Up America!
ATTN: Tiny Hat Campaign
3740 N. Josey Lane, Suite 102
Carrollton, TX 75007

The East African Preterm Birth Initiative is a project of the University of California, San Francisco, and is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Hats will be collected at their conference on World Prematurity Day and distributed to newborn healthcare facilities in Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya.

This is such a great project and an easy way to help little ones. Because my daughter was born six weeks early I always want to do what I can to help preemies, so I will definitely be contributing to this campaign and I hope you will, too, if it moves you.

[Photo: Warm Up America.]

Comments

  1. Thanks for posting this. I have some soft acrylic that will be perfect for these hats. Someone gave it to me, and I was wondering what to do with it!

  2. On the site you linked, there are instructions for knit and crochet hats. Also on that site is a “Learn more here” link, which is to a PDF file which has different instructions! The needle sizes in the PDF seem more reasonable to me. For example, the main site suggests size 10 for worsted weight; the PDF suggests size 7.

Have you read?

Fun Halloween Cowls to Knit

One of the fun things about knitters is that we will use a holiday theme on any kind of project. From Easter bunny socks to Christmas sweaters, there’s no combination of holiday motif and knitwear genre we won’t combine. 

Case in point: Halloween cowls. 

This fun cowl from Sweet Vireo Designs features large carved pumpkins and little cats and skulls. It uses two colors of DK weight yarn and I love the multicolored yarn for the background color on this one. And the braids! So cute. 

Spooky Season by Jocelyn Tunney (also on Ravelry) uses fingering weight yarn in two colors to make a design with crescent moons and eyes. There are two circumferences and two heights available so you can make it a neck hugger or a slightly bigger project if you like. 

Make more moons with the Broom Riding Cowl from Vanessa Ewing Knits. This two color pattern looks extra fun with a multicolored yarn for the colorwork, but you can use a solid as well. It calls for DK weight yarn but there is also a fingering weight version if you have some yarn in your stash you want to use. 

Jinx Made has another fun Halloween cowl, this time covered in skulls. South Philly Skulls uses DK weight yarn and comes in two lengths, and there’s also a matching hat pattern, both of which can be found on Ravelry. 

The Ghost Stories cowl from Melissa Knit Wear is a two-color cowl with ghosts of different sizes on the body. It uses DK weight yarn, and average sized skeins will allow you to get two cowls out of two skeins. It also calls for stitch markers to help you keep your place in the chart. 

Or stitch up a cowl with a giant bat on it. The Nightling Cowl from Jen Immer uses DK weight yarn in two colors and has moons and a large bat on it. This pattern can be found on Ravelry. 

How about spooky trees? The Weirwood Cowl from Andrea Krüß-Anders is inspired by the weirwood trees in the Game of Thrones books, and is worked in two colors of fingering weight yarn. You can find this free pattern on Ravelry. 

If a bandana cowl is more your thing, try Cowloween from Tellybean Knits (on Ravelry). This colorful design is worked from the top down and features pumpkins, ghosts and candy colored stripes, and is worked in a light fingering weight yarn. There are kid and adult sizes available.