A PURPLE Pause

Despite blogging about all my WIPs currently on the needles, I have decided to put all knitting projects on hold for the rest of the month. I will only allow myself to knit a few rows on a project as a way to reward myself.

Why such a harsh decision? I'm doing it all for charity, baby. I have decided to knit nothing but purple baby hats for the rest of the month for the PURPLE Crying Cap Campaign! For those of you who have no clue what I'm talking about, well, the Prevent Shaken Baby Syndrome BC and PERIOD of Purple Crying are on a mission to collect as many PURPLE newborn caps by November 5th. These little caps will be given to babies born across the province of BC the week of November 15th, which just also happens to be Canada's National Child Day(!), in hopes to raise awareness for this life-saving project.

Prevent Shaken Baby Syndrome BC hopes to promote crucial parenting skills, infant/parent bonding, and help new parents understand that it's typical for every baby to go through an early infancy stage of non-stop crying that is quite often misunderstood. PSBSBC hopes to educate and help new parents about this normal infancy period, how to cope with the frustrations that can accompany it, and to understand that crying is a key trigger to shaking. So to help spread the word there's been a province-wide shout out to all knitters asking if they can help out for this GREAT cause.

I have to admit that I knew nothing about Shaken Baby Syndrome, or just how common it is until I got pregnant and gave birth to the Munchkin. For a while there I was seriously (and still am) horrified to read in the newspaper or to hear on the news how a baby had died because it was shaken to death. Or how a child has been left severely mentally handicapped due to being shaken so hard to an inch of his/her life. It makes me utterly sick and want to cry to even think about it.

To go even further with this, I have discovered that through my work I can help raise money for a possible grant by participating and using the time I've spent knitting up these sweet little gifts towards a program called Make Your Mark. For every hour I've spent volunteering, Starbucks will donate $10!! I can take this even further by rounding up friends and family, so say if there were 5 of us knitting hats for 5 hours Starbucks will donate $150 to PSBSBC!! I'm hoping to recruit a few people, but so far I've had no such luck. I'm going to dedicate Sunday October 24th to knitting up baby hats, and using those hours for the grant. If anyone out there is interested in joining me, please don't hesitate to email me! Unfortunately, you must be there in person with me for your time to count. Sorry, those are Starbucks' rules.

In the meantime, I'm still planning on knitting as many hats as I can. I went and bought a ton of yarn and am determined to use it all up for this cause. So far I've got 7 hats done with an 8th already on the needles. Ok, I've spent too much time blogging. Must go knit PURPLE caps!!