Baby hats are one of the easiest items to knit or crochet. They are small, so you get instant gratification of a finished project. And they are a great way to use up small-ish leftovers of yarn. They are also so incredibly satisfying because you are making something for tiny, adorable, helpless creatures.
I had a lot of yarn in baby colors that I did not need anymore and also some leftovers of soft yarns that were too small for most other things, so I thought baby hats was the perfect solution to both conundrums. I set up a small friendly competition in my local knitting group to see who can knit the most hats, but mostly to give me some motivation. It proved to be quite effective since I ended up making 30+ baby hats in just one month!
I also used up a lot of yarn and made room for more. Another wonderful thing that happened during this project was that I noticed that the more I knit, the faster I seemed to be churning them out. Some nights I even made four or five hats! Now, that might seem minuscule, but the very first of these hats that I made took me over three hours.
I knew I wanted to donate these baby hats from the start, I just didn’t know where. There were multiple organizations that collected baby hats and other handmade items, so I had to find the right one. I have another post about donating hand-crafted items in general, but I wanted to focus on the hats here since they were so important.
There were a few hats where I ended up adding a different color to the brim because it was too short when the yarn finished and I had some leftovers of another color. I think they came out nice, special even.
That boucle yarn was a nightmare to work with and I hated it, but when I was making these hats, it felt so oddly soft and cozy, like it just found its perfect project and was right at home. I didn’t have any problems knitting the baby hats with it that I did with other projects. Weird, right?
I bought the yarn for these purple ones specifically for baby hats for an organization that was promoting awareness of the Shaken Baby Syndrome and the Period of PURPLE Crying. I sent all the purple ones to CLICK For Babies.
Here are all of the hats I ended up making, including the ones during the competition and those prior to that. I fully expect to keep making more of these when I get more leftovers of yarn!
You can also find this project on Ravelry.
