Crocheting For a Cause

A few days ago, a local non-profit group let us know that they were in a critical situation and posted that a local hospital NICU was in urgent need of 35-40 Valentine themed hats and small blankets. I knew I had to help.

Now, if you know me, you know I LOVE Valentine’s Day. I love all the pretty red and pink decorations, the heart candy, truffles, etc. A lot of people don’t like the holiday because it’s just made up by companies to get you to spend money and you shouldn’t need a holiday to get your someone special a card or flowers. I get that and I respect that but I love this holiday. I love it so much that it also happens to be my anniversary.

But that’s not the only reason I wanted to help. My son was in the NICU for eight days when he was born. He was born at 36 weeks with a hole in his heart and had pneumonia. My poor baby was having a rough start to life. Despite the NICU nurses calling him the runt of the batch, he got well very quickly and made his way home the next week. We were so happy and forever grateful for all the Drs. and nurses did for him.

Ok, back to the task at hand. I got very excited when I seen that the local NICU needed hats. I gathered up all my pretty Valentine colored yarn I bought last month and got to planning.

I made five preemie hats with hearts on them. They are so small that they’ll literally fit on an orange. I found the pattern at the Crochet For You blog. It was a very easy pattern to follow and even included the pattern for the heart.

Then I moved on to some newborn striped hats. I found this pattern over on Tennie Belle Embroidery Crochet & More. The boys will like these hats for sure.

And now for my favorite hat, the Cupcake Hat. I found it over at the Krazy Kabbage Blog. This hat took a little more time only because the pattern was for a 0-3 month and I needed a newborn size. So, here’s what I did.

Row 1: 8 hdc in third loop (8)

Row 2: 2 hdc in third loop in each stitch (16)

Row 3: 2 hdc in third loop in first stitch, 1 hdc in third loop in the next stitch. Repeat. (24)

Row 4: 2 hdc in third loop in first stitch, 1 hdc in third loop in the next two stitches. Repeat. (32)

Row 5: 2 hdc in third loop in first stitch, 1 hdc in third loop in the next three stitches. Repeat. (40)

Row 6-8: hdc in third loop in each stitch.

I followed her pattern for the brim except I only did 9 chains. The brim is only 8 sc stitches long.

That gave me a 3.82″ in diameter when making the top part of the hat and it was 5″ in length.

I now have ten hats to donate to the NICU center who requested them. I’ll probably make more hats when I have time but I’m pretty happy with what I have made. And I have to admit that all of these baby hats have given me baby fever!!