Hat Not Hate.. an anti-bullying campaign

I don’t know if you’ve heard or not but there’s this really neat campaign called Hat Not Hate. A bunch of us crafters are uniting and donating our time and blue hats to the cause. There’s even a great FB group that is run by a great group of creators that are dedicated to the cause. It’s awesome. I’m sure you want more info so I’m going to tell you all about it so keep reading.

What is Hat Not Hate?

Hat not Hate is a campaign started by Lion Brand, a yarn company, in 2018. It was started to bring awareness to bullying. They are encouraging people to make blue hats and send them to them in NJ before August 1st. They will be distributed to kids throughout participating schools to wear, empowering them to stand up to bullying. So, why blue hats? The color blue represents awareness, peace and solidarity. It’s the color to wear to support anti-bullying. I chose to start with these two blue yarns from Hobby Lobby to start making my hats. I love the feel of ILTY yarn but any yarn will work.

How can you help?

Make hats and lots of them… We can all help provide the hats that help bring awareness. It can be any color blue but it needs to be at least 75% blue in order for them to be able to use them. And you can use any hat pattern as long as it’s a circumference ranging from 16-20 inches since these hats are for kids from 5 years to 18 years. Hat not Hate has some up for free on their website. You can find them HERE. They’ve set a goal of 100,000 hats to collect. They’ve already collected almost 30,000 hats so far. How amazing is that?

Where can you find a pattern?

Like I stated above, you can use any pattern as long as it’s a certain size. You can also join the FB group, Crochetmous Crew: Encouragement. Community. Crochet. They are hosting a Make-A-Long Challenge for HNH and will be releasing patterns for everyone in the group to use. There will also be exclusive deals on the patterns for people in the group. You can even buy hat not hate tags to put on your hats. It’s not required but they look really cool. I have some all ready to be put on some blue hats.

Sharing and promoting the cause..

That one is easy. Just wear your blue hat. You can buy a hat not hate tag for it over on their website, HERE, if you’d like but it’s not necessary. Just make sure you share a photo of you in your hat. Post it to FB, IG and don’t forget to use the hashtag #hatnothate. And don’t forget to tag them @hat_not_hate.

So, who’s with me? I would love to see you over in the FB group so I can see all of your beautiful hats.

-Manda