Caps For Newborns…

I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good thing, therefore, that I can do or any kindness I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it for I shall not pass this way again.”

-Stephen Grellet

My favorite site for this week is Mama to Mama. Its purpose is to find meaningful ways to make a small but significance difference in the life of others. The idea is to connect handcrafters with mothers, children and families in need of a little bit of handmade love.

The first project that they are undertaking is to send handmade caps to aid the newborns in Haiti. Mama to Mama provides the downloadable infant cap pattern, you provide the fabric. They encourage us to use T-shirts that are no longer needed by our families to make the caps. One adult t-shirt will make two caps. The full details and pattern are on the Mama to Mama site.



Author and crafter, Amanda Blake Soule who is the creator of the project says:

“I invite you to join me in sharing your creativity, time and energy to aid our Caribbean sisters. Our life circumstances may be so very different from one another, but as women and mothers, we share so very much in common – the most basic being our desire to keep our children safe and healthy from the moment of birth onward. Please read on to find out how you can contribute to this project in a simple but meaningful way.”

~Amanda

I’ve sent my children looking for the T-shirts that they have no intention of wearing again. The pattern is simple and the hats go together very quickly–and just think, they help to save brand new lives. Imagine what we could do with one hour of our time. How much difference could we make?

About to be caps…

Almost there…

See the final results of the Cap to Cap-Haitian Project HERE.

Nest Building

Lyndi, at last, is beginning to look like she’s expecting. Her body is so long and willowy that her baby girl has been able to hide away from all of us…until now. She kicks and squirms so much more these days, like she wants to be sure we know she’s there, waiting to be ours. She’s like her mama that way. They haven’t settled on a name yet and so the sweet thing has been dubbed Baby Chomp after the Nintendo character. Lyndi says, “You know that phase where you’re just starving, so you eat…and then 5 minutes later, you’re starving again.” Baby Chomp…get it?

Of course, she felt like she was eating everything in sight–like Pac man–tortillas, Tillamook, Goldfish crackers, Teddy Grahams and anything with cream cheese on it. All of which was very new and scary to this daughter. But I think her body was making up for all the year’s she spend flitting and dancing around forgetting to eat altogether. She’s happily somewhere in the middle now.

So, as the temperature keeps dropping and we huddle in a bit more closely to home, I’ll start pulling out some of the finer yarns and slightly smaller hooks and begin the stacks of toasty things, to keep the new one coming snuggly warm. The booties and socks and caps and leggings. Then to rekindle interest in the dozens of half-worked projects waiting to be finished.

There are 4 or 5 shawls and wraps in the works, countless slippers for 20 or so feet, new hats for the twins, soft, jingly toys–with no noisy microchips attached–thank Heavens, and my own version of “doggy dollies” –that I will show you in the next little while. A few piles of crocheting are for now, most have the Christmas deadline–and the rest are for January…for that tiny face we don’t know yet.


All to keep my baby birds warm till spring.

Candy Corn Baby Hat

So the babies needed hats and it was nearly Halloween. What was I supposed to do? I found this adorable pattern for a crocheted  Candy Corn Baby Hat: I had to wonder if they would turn out as well in real life as they did in the pattern picture. They turned out wonderfully and only took an afternoon/evening. So, yeah…very fast.

Fold the brim up—or leave it down. Either way.

I did increase the size for Beckham (right), because his head is rounder than Lily’s (repeat row 6 twice) but the pattern perfectly fit Lily (left) with no alterations.