mad hatter

There's been quite a few new babies who found their ways into this world recently. To welcome them and let them have a snuggly cosy warm winter, I've been busy knitting hats. That's a tad tricky, because they are spring/summer babies, and who knows how big a head they'll have in six month's time? Nevermind, Cubling was rather excited and tried them all on a good few times, and they stretch. A lot. I think she could actually get away with wearing them.

The pattern (Baby I-Cord Beanie) is available for free on Ravelry, designed by Woolly Wormhead, who is a designer of hat knitting patterns. If you fancy having a look at her design, you'll see that she has a lot of fabulous designs to offer, many of which are free downloads. She's also one of the contributors to my charity knitting pattern book, which brings me nicely to the second point to this post (apart from showing off my knitting and welcoming Cameron, Nell and Kristian).

Since I last posted about my project, I've had about 9 pattern donations, all obtained through posting on the designer group on Ravelry and submitting a call for submissions (with which I got help from a volunteer moderator at Ravelry). I didn't specify any particular type of pattern but most patterns were child related. Mhairi at Flavaknits helpfully suggested that knitters love themes and I've decided that the book will have a theme after all. As Save the Children ran an immensely successful campaign where people knitted baby hats (knit one save one) for the child survival campaign, it seemed appropriate that this them should be ... hats. Particularly because I will be able to use photographs of these knitted hats and their bearers for my project.

Two dilemmas:

1. Some of the pattern donations aren't hats. I don't want to take them out so they'll stay in.

2. I have nowhere near the required number of patterns. As Save the Children celebrates its 90th birthday, I'm aiming for 90 patterns.

My big decision to tackle the second point is that I've started approaching designers directly. A search through ravelry, and by picking the hats I like, most designers can be contacted directly. However I do realise that I'm probably not the only person doing this and I do feel a bit bad about bothering so many people. Still, I want this book to be a success and all the bother for the designer (if they are not interested) consists of deleting or ignoring my email. I don't even expect a courtesy response if they don't want to contribute. Being a realist, I still fear that I may not reach my 90 pattern target. Nevermind, I'll come up with some compromise that has a relation to the number 90.

How surprised was I then that the first hat I picked as "oh, I'd love to have that pattern in my book" was by Amanda Soule of Soulemama, one of my favourite blogs. I really shouldn't be surprised, I love her creations, knitting or other. Stumbling over her did remind me though that it would be worthwhile checking all the other contributors blogs and websites and maybe doing the lemonade award properly, i.e. thanking them for their contribution with the award and linking to them. So, if you're creatively minded, watch this space.

For now, if you'll excuse me please, I have another hat to knit...